The Day Boy and the Night Girl
by Scheherazade Bet
Summary: Plot shamelessly stolen from Greco-Roman mythology. A Cupid and Psyche story, sort of.
1. Chapter 1

**Title:** The Day Boy and the Night Girl

**Rating:** R-ish

**Summary:** A Cupid and Psyche story, sort of.

**Parings:** Dawn/Andrew, Slight Dawn/Connor, Refs to Andrew/Warren

**Spoilers:** Set about two years after Not Fade Away (ignoring the comics)

**Disclaimer:** Not Mine

**Notes:** Several folks assisted me with research, insight, beta reading and moral support. Many thanks to: Liz, B., Lindsay, Sylvia, and especially Sian. Ya'll rock. Any remaining mistakes, general weirdness and bad writing habits are mine. Story title taken from the fairy tale of the same name. Plot shamelessly stolen from Greco-Roman mythology. If this fic was going to have one theme song it would be "All My Favorite People (Are Broken)" by Over the Rhine. I never considered Dawn/Andrew as a pairing until I came across Deird1's essay ("Dawn Summers / Andrew Wells: Their-Love-Is-So-Random") on the subject a few months ago. It's really interesting and definitely worth your time to check out.

"The fear of loss is the overriding reason for failure to adapt to change." R. Heifetz

My sister sipped her cappuccino casually, but her tone wasn't casual at all. There was a tension there, the beginning of something I wasn't going to like, I could tell.

"La nostra casa non a cosc gracias - wait, that's grasso."

"Fat? Really? I mean, yeah, we've gotten addicted to the groceries from Lara down on Via Boccea. You've seen their pasta section - right?" I caught myself gesturing with my hands emphatically. "I mean, you haven't been home much, but if you haven't been over there, we should totally go after this. They have this one-"

"Wait, Dawn," she cut me off. "Big, not fat. What I really meant was that while our house here is a lot bigger than the Revello house, it's not that much bigger."

I starred past her to the stone fountain on the square. It wasn't an especially historic or famous one. Its main ornamentation was a pair of cherubs holding hands, standing on either side of a dolphin that spat water. The first of several horse-drawn carriages appeared at the far corner of the street. Inside of it sat a pair of beaming newlyweds, dressed in white.

It was a neighborhood thing. Every local couple took a carriage ride around the fountain after their wedding ceremony. It was supposed to be good luck or something. It was like a parade, usually five to ten carriages, all in white and celebrating.

Once Buffy and I discovered this tradition, we never missed a Saturday at this cafe when she was around. It was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen, all those couples, all their love, all their happiness. It was a tradition decidedly non-imbedded with blood, death, or destruction.

"Look at that one," I squealed, pointing to the second carriage in the line. "Look at the little kids. Oh my god, the cuteness, it's cute overload!"

Three flower girls crowded onto the front seat of the carriage. They were all maybe about five years old and each wore a huge white bow in her hair. They threw handfuls of rose petals into the fountain and onto the street.

Across from them in the carriage slouched a little boy with blond curls who held a wicker basket in both hands, looking bored and kind of miserable. Then one of the girls began pelting him with rose petals and he laughed.

"And," Buffy continued, ignoring the kids, "not being such a big place? Well, people notice things after a while. They hear things, even in our house."

I didn't like where this conversation was going. I poked at a piece of the omelet we were sharing, but I didn't want it any more. I had prayed to every deity I could think of that she would just leave me alone. I leaned back in my chair, trying to focus on the action in on the square instead.

"So, Dawn," she set her cup down with a hard thump on the table. "Is there something I need to know about?"

Apparently petitioning the Powers with prayer really was a waste of time. I shrugged and didn't look at her.

She leaned forward, obscuring my field of vision. "Look, I know I said I was gonna stop trying to micromanage your life and everything, and I know it sucks when someone's pushing you to share more than you're ready to share, but you know our world, it's...different. Sometimes normally private stuff can't stay private with us. You know why we have to be all cards-on-the-table. You've seen...so, just tell me what happened. Not asking for intimate details here, just the basics."

She was right. It had been a long time since she had treated me like a child, or anything other than an equal. The passage of time could do that sometimes, at least I hoped so.

"The two of you were...um...heard. Not by me though!" The last part tumbled out of her too quickly, as if she was trying to avoid getting all accuse-y and judge-y. Which, of course, meant she was about to get really accuse-y and judge-y, and that was infuriating.

"Summers, Dawn. Little Sister. X dash two zero, zero, zero."

"What is that supposed to be, name, rank, and serial number?" She snapped. "Look, please try to be a little more mature about-"

Now she was pissed. Fine, so was I. The situation was unraveling and neither of us could stop it.

"Shut up! Just shut up, Buffy! I am so not talking to you about this!"

She grabbed my wrists. I tried to pull away but she was too strong. "Oh yes you are! You are because your only other choice is me asking him about it and I don't think you want that!"

"No! No, you leave him alone! Do you hear me?" The emotion that had been knotted in my chest uncoiled. I had promised myself I wasn't going to cry about this anymore, but the tears came in a hot flood.

People sitting at the tables nearby began murmuring uneasily. We were making a scene. Correction, I was making a scene. Must be Tuesday.

Buffy smoothed her thumbs over the tops of my wrists. I knew she was trying to soothe me and that just made me angrier. "Oh honey, did he hurt you? Did that-"

Her tone had changed and it was all too familiar. That tone meant violence. I had never been more afraid of her. Not for myself, but for what she might do to him.

She was supposed to be one of the good guys, but sometimes she was just scary. What she did to people. Well, they were all evil and they all pretty much deserved it, but he wasn't and he didn't and I had promised to protect him. Hand down the mouth of the monster and everything.

"No! It was my fault. All me. Just me."

She was so much faster than me. If she took off for the house I would never be able to catch her in time. He would never see her coming. With determination I wrenched my hands from under hers, seizing her forearms, my nails digging into her flesh. She grunted with surprise.

"Buffy, you touch him and I will _end_ you!" It came out more hysterical and desperate than menacing, but I got her attention.

She sat back in her chair, looking at me like I had grown an extra head. Bloodletting averted, at least for the moment, I pushed my plate onto the floor, laid my head on the table and sobbed.

Our waiter and another man, probably the manager rushed over to us. Underneath the wailing in my head, I could hear my sister apologizing and pushing Euros into their hands and struggling in Italian. "Va tutto bene. La mia sorellina ha appena perso il grande amore. Lei si calma in un minuto."

The big love? Why couldn't she just stick to English? Everyone around here spoke English anyway. The big love. My humiliation was complete, but at least neither of us was mad anymore. A loud screech interrupted the white noise in my head when she scooted her chair beside me and put her arm around my shoulders.

"Hey. Hey, Dawnie. I'm sorry. It just seemed like you kind of forgot who we are - you know? We made a pact because surprises get us into trouble. Surprises tend to put us and the people we love in danger."

I nodded against the red of the tablecloth. It smelled like bleach.

"So, and I'll try and make this quick. You were, um, involved with him, right?" She cleared her throat, obviously as uncomfortable with the topic as I was. "It was a...thing?"

"No. Well, kind of. God, I don't know!"

The waiter had finally, mercifully disappeared. There was no question, however, that we had an attentive audience for my testimony. I wanted an invisibility cloak, or maybe a giant anvil could fall out of the sky and crush me. That would be even better.

"And you were safe? Please tell me you were safe! You know condoms break, but the contraception ritual Will showed you, performed each month-"

"Yes! Yes, of course!" Oh god. This was never going to end.

"And he never forced, never coerced-"

"No! He never-" I gulped. "It's all over now anyway." This was the first time I had said it out loud to anyone but him and it stung.

"And you wish it wasn't."

I tried to swallow and nodded.

She shook her head. "Never let it be said that Summers women are known for the sanity of their choices."

Studying the blue embroidered roses on her peasant blouse, I wanted so much to be able to explain it, at least to myself.

"I screwed things up, I really did."

She nodded. "And now you need to deal with it. I saw him last night after I got home from the Malta conference. He doesn't look well, Dawn. I don't think he's taking it very well."

"What, no recriminations? No what-were-you-thinking? No this-is-an-intervention?"

She paused, as if her own words tasted sour in her mouth, then she shrugged and it was almost convincing. "You're an adult, mostly. And I promised you that I was going to stop, that I was going to butt out on the personal stuff."

"And this is you, butting out? Nice job."

"I'm trying, but this, this smells like the beginning of an issue, the kind that affects all of us. Can you try and work it out? Or maybe you need closure? Something? I just don't want to see things get out of hand. We've all worked too hard to get here. If this is your mess, you need to put on your big girl pants and clean it up."

I nodded again. The movement left me dizzy. My head ached.

"Okay, that's my kick in your ass for the day." The atmosphere shifted. She pushed her chair back from the table, slinging her red leather bag over her shoulder.

"Awkward conversation done now. I can tell when I'm being over-bearing and crazy-making, I can take a hint." She stood. "Shall we adjourn for the afternoon? I saw this gorgeous dress over at Zara that would look-"

"No thanks. I think I need to just, I don't know, take a walk or something." I stretched a weak smile across my face and she bent and gave me a half-hug.

"Okay. Ciao bella ragazza." She winked at me and sauntered out of the cafe.

I let out a sigh, resting my face in my hands. I wished she would just speak English. And somehow and I hadn't even gotten around to explaining what happened in the apartment, never mind the whole demonic infection thing.

**********TBC


	2. Chapter 2

It wasn't the first time I crossed the cold bathroom tile from my room to his. It wasn't even the first time I slept beside him. No one in our house slept alone much.

It wasn't a sex thing. Most of us could count far too many occasions of opening our eyes and discovering that the stuff of our nightmares was still there, grinning and hideous. Sharing beds was a safety-in-numbers habit that some of us never got over completely.

When my sister was out and her bed was empty, Andrew was always my second choice. It didn't mean anything, he just didn't snore as loudly as my other options and his room was the closest. We had our own bathroom between our bedrooms and he kept it immaculate. It was almost as good as having one to myself and it was the envy of the household. Nepotism had its privileges.

That night I could not remember what I had been dreaming about. I woke on my back with my hands covering my face and I wasn't screaming, I was crying. My heart was breaking and I didn't know why.

Blurry-eyed, I made my way to him. He never seemed to mind the intrusion or to even wake up much. He stirred in his sleep and rolled over, muttering something that sounded like 'frackin' Cylon'.

I snuggled against him, resting my forehead against his back. The familiar warmth began to soothe my nerves. In the morning, we planned to bake muffins with the lush blueberries we bought in the village market the day before. More specifically, Andrew would probably do most of the prep work and the mixing and I would supervise and pick on him mercilessly about everything I could think of and he would be a good sport about it because he always was. I drew my knees up so that they met the backs of his legs. Content, I drifted.

That night should not have been different than any other I had spent in his bed. I should have slept soundly until morning, woken to the sound of him in the shower, and migrated back to my own room through the outer hallway. If things hadn't gone crazy, I would have thrown on my sweats and joined him with the others in the vineyard behind our house for tai chi and self-defense practice. The sun would have risen, pink haze heating the aromatic fig trees that grew wild on the slope below us. Then we would have scattered for breakfast and the city and points beyond.

That was how it should have gone. Instead, I woke with my arm draped over his waist, the palm of my hand lying against him far more intimately than it should have been. The civilized thing to do was to turn over and not call attention to it. That would be bad manners. It didn't mean anything after all. It was just what happened to guys when they slept.

There was no need to get all uncomfortable about it. I realized then that Andrew was awake and holding his breath, observing etiquette by pretending to sleep, waiting for me to move my hand. And now it was uncomfortable.

I should have gotten it over with, moved my hand and been done. Nothing wrong, just an innocent mistake, and something never to be considered again. Except that my hand wouldn't move. Panic began to seep around the edges of my consciousness. My hand was going to move, it just wasn't going to move away.

Somewhere in my head, there was a Dawn who wasn't particularly civilized. She had a tendency to take what she wanted and do as she pleased. When she was angry, she lashed out. When she was bored, she made trouble. I thought I left her behind in Sunnydale, but here she was, in bed with us, and she was in no mood for etiquette.

My thumb moved first, back and forth over the jersey fabric that covered him. He tensed, but didn't say anything. The air in the room was heavy and charged with current. I should stop, I thought. I should stop now. But I couldn't stop.

I squeezed him gently and something low in me wanted to purr when he gasped. I moved my hand lower, cupping and squeezing as I went. His pulse raced. I slipped my hand under the waistband of his boxers. His skin was hotter and smoother than I had imagined possible.

He twitched against my fingers. It was incredibly exciting, the power I held over him. I wished I could see his expression, if he was into it, or just scared and confused, or, like I was - all of those things. I lightly raked my nails over him and he made a small animal sound. I had to see his face.

I sat up on my elbow and pushed him until he rolled onto his back. His eyelids were closed and he seemed to open them with great effort. In the glow from the security lights outside, I could see that his pupils were so dilated that the irises had almost vanished. I barely recognized the person below me.

"Andrew?" I asked, wondering if he was in there at all.

"So pretty," he whispered. "What are you doing, pretty, pretty girl?" He sounded so different, voice soft, detached. He reached up and absently traced a fingertip up and down my arm. The gesture sent tiny shockwaves over me.

"Andrew, should I stop?"

"I think this is maybe a bad idea, Dawn."

Good. At least one of us still had a brain! Now I had a more than acceptable reason to take my hands off him and go spend the rest of the night in the pool, cooling down. A request, but not really a request. Damn.

"Do you want me to stop?"

He was quiet. He turned his head to face the window and then he whispered, "No."

His answer glittered in my head for a moment and then I was pulling at cloth and he was helping and then his underwear was down around his knees.

I should have read Cosmo more often, because I had no idea what I was doing. I should have bought a manual. I shouldn't have been here at all. I ran my tongue along the inside of his thigh. When I got to the place where leg became hip, I bit gently.

He gasped and whimpered. I savored the rush. Feeling more confident, I took him into my mouth. I'd seen glimpses of porn online and in the magazines on the newsstands in Rome. They always showed women gleefully bobbing their heads up and down like it was no big deal. I bobbed. And then I gagged. How in the world was this supposed to work?

I rose up, gripping the base in my fist and concentrating on swirling my tongue around the head. Andrew didn't seem to notice my ineptitude. His hands struggled in the sheets and then they were in my hair, pushing me down. He arched into me and I gagged again and then there was wetness everywhere. It tasted like salt and soap and kind of burned as it ran down the corners of my mouth.

I looked at him wildly, trying to communicate and keep my mouth closed at the same time. What now? Bodily fluids really ought to be reserved for the bathroom or the battlefield. He saw my predicament and made a quick backward motion with his head. I sat there uncomprehending. Drowning.

"Just swallow," he said. "You'll be okay."

I managed to do what he said. I thought it was going to come back up, but it didn't. He scrambled off the bed and took my hand.

"Come on, sweetie, in here." He spoke softly, reassuringly.

I followed him into the bathroom, dazed. He opened the medicine cabinet and brought out a bottle of cinnamon mouthwash.

"Here. Gargle. It'll be better in a minute."

I sipped and gargled and he was right. It was better. To my left, Andrew turned on the faucet and ran the water. He picked up a towel from the lower cabinet and soaked it in the tap and then wrung it out. I spat. He stepped in close and gently wiped my face. He was so tender.

"I'm sorry, sweetie. I'm so sorry. I didn't know. I mean, it seemed like you...I shouldn't...never mind." He kissed my forehead. "Go back to bed and let me finish cleaning up in here."

I wandered out. He hadn't told me to leave his room and I didn't think I could stand to do it anyway. I went to his bed and waited for him.

When an Andrew-shaped shadow emerged from the bathroom, I moved from the middle of the bed to the far side by the window. I felt embarrassed and childish and just...stupid. He sat on the far side, resting back on the pillows. We didn't look at each other. The space between us yawned out like a canyon.

It seemed like hours before he spoke. "Do you want to talk about that? Any of that?" His voice was hoarse.

"No." I crossed my arms. "Maybe."

What was I supposed to say? Sorry I molested you, I was temporarily possessed?

"I'm sorry, Andrew."

"You are?"

"Well, aren't you?"

He was very busy, tracing the design of the quilt over and over with his index finger. "No. I liked it."

Something fluttered in my chest.

"Me too."

Almost as if we had rehearsed it, we each moved toward the center of the bed. He arranged himself on his back and I cuddled up under his arm, pressed my cheek into his chest, and wrapped my arms around him. I had no explanation for my behavior, but his acceptance of it was solace. I didn't know what I would have done if he had been angry or made fun of me.

"What do you miss the most?" I asked. "About home?"

"My brother and my aunt." He said immediately. "And green apple Jolly Ranchers."

I realized with a sick jolt that I had no idea if Tucker or any of his family had survived the last apocalypse. He never mentioned them, but then I had never asked.

"What about you, Dawn?" He seemed to want to push me through the subject, as if he could read my thoughts.

"I miss Diet Coke with real ice in it. Remember what it was like, when places put ice in your drink as a normal thing you didn't need to ask for?"

"The bar at the Intercontinental in town does it automatically. They cater to Americans."

"I know," I whined, following his lead away from the subject matter quicksand, "But it tastes different here, and it's cubed ice. I want the shaved kind so I can chew on it and enjoy the crunch."

"That's really terrible for your teeth," he chided. "You know they say it means you're...um..." he trailed off.

"What?"

"Um...frustrated. Repressed, sexually."

"Oh." Quicksand again. I began to wonder if we could ever have another normal conversation.

We sat for a moment and then he said, "Um, that wasn't awkward at all."

Shame settled over me. "I really don't know what happened," I told him. "Maybe there's something wrong with me."

"I have an idea," he said, sitting up and reaching over to the lamp on the nightstand.

I groaned and squinted in the harshness. "What are you doing?"

"Left ear. And you're right, about the Diet Coke. I miss that too and I never even thought about it until now."

"What?"

"Let me see behind your left ear."

I submitted to the inspection. What was he doing?

"Nope." He switched off the light and pulled the covers over us.

"Nope, what?"

"You aren't currently being controlled by a Herling demon. If you were, the back of your left earlobe would be distinctly green. It isn't a Saeg demon either. If it were, your left earlobe would be covered in tiny reptilian scales. It can't be a Mit-doziack demon, because your left earlobe would-"

God, he could be so annoying.

"Stop! Okay, I get it! Enough with the demons - obviously no demons here, Andrew!"

"Obviously. I told you."

Smug bastard.

"I guess it was just me then," I said more to myself than him. "I guess I just went crazy."

"Well, I'm honored to have been a party to your madness, m'dear. It's not as though I retire to my boudoir every evening with the expectation of pretty girls dropping by later."

Good grief, who the hell was he channeling now, Albert Finney?

"Or pretty boys, dahlink!" I chimed in my best Natasha.

"Those either," he agreed amicably. He sounded like himself again. "Actually...um...my hand in the shower in the morning seems to be the best policy. Safer and far less messy."

It was such a personal thing to tell me. I wondered if he was really in a sharing mood or just trying to cheer me up. Whatever, it was working.

"And who do you think about in the shower," I asked, feeling playful, "Han Solo or Princess Leia?"

He shrugged. "Assuming you're speaking metaphorically, either. Both. It doesn't matter, it's just mechanics. Just parts and friction."

"Oh, now THAT'S romantic! Parts and friction?" I punched him in the arm.

"Ow!" He laughed, rubbing his arm. Then he became more serious. "Yeah, I don't think I actually do romantic. I'm not wired that way."

I was intrigued. "For real? You've never been in love? Even if it was totally unrequited?"

He shook his head. "I thought maybe so once, but no. I mean, I'm not a Vulcan or anything. I feel stuff like lust and loyalty and agape all the time, just not so much with the Hollywood soft gel lens filter kind of romantic love."

"Like the Tin Man?

"Sure."

I pondered everything he had told me. It triggered an idea.

"I think I must be like you," I said finally.

"Oh really? Who do you think about in the shower?" He seemed amused by my confession. I was glad he couldn't see me blushing in the dark.

"Okay, so I never told anybody this, but, um, I see patterns."

"Patterns. Like for sewing?"

I sighed. "Yep, that's right, I'm a sew-rosexual. Sorry to come out to you this way, but do you have any thread? Thread just flat does it for me!"

"Yeah, baby and I got a big ol' quilt pin right here for ya!" He said it like Groucho Marx, waggling his eyebrows at me.

We lay in bed giggling until he said, "So? Patterns?" He seemed like he really wanted to know.

"I see shapes and shadows," I told him. "Sometimes colors too, like in fractals. It's not that I deliberately focus on those things, it's just where my head goes. I've tried picturing actual people and stuff before, but they usually fade pretty fast." It was a relief to tell someone. It had been an odd secret to keep. Not that I spent much time talking about sex with anyone. I had never needed to lie about it.

"Oh, wow. Wow, Dawn."

I could feel blood rushing under my skin and was thankful that I didn't have to look him in the eye.

"You know that's incredibly hot - right?" He seemed fascinated, almost predatory.

"Don't tell anyone, okay? About any of this? Seriously, Andrew, I can't-"

"No, no of course not. I wouldn't do that to you." He hugged me tightly.

"Tell me what you meant by agape," I changed the subject. I was getting sleepy. "Isn't that religious?"

"Not originally, more spiritual. It's from the Greek, you should know that. Divine love. Like when people say 'Namaste', the divine in me greets the divine you-"

"Thou art god and all that? I finished that book yesterday afternoon, by the way. Very weird stuff, Andrew. And more than a little kinky. Why didn't you warn me about that book?" I could barely hold my eyelids open. I couldn't remember when I had felt as comfortable.

"Ah, that explains everything. I had forgotten you had the book."

"It does?"

"Yeah. The Man from Mars? Totally sexy, Dawn."

"Oh my god, you are such a freak!" I smacked at him half-heartedly.

"Apparently, you're kind of okay with that."

"Mmm, apparently," I answered. And then I slept.

***********************************************TBC


	3. Chapter 3

The following morning, I woke up much later than usual, feeling better than I had in ages. The smell of baking muffins and coffee wafted up from the kitchen. From the noise level, it sounded like there were at least ten people down there. A shriek rose up out of the dull roar.

"Fuck you and your patriarchal there-is-no-try bullshit! If I don't try, I can't eat. It's a toaster oven, and I want my spelt bagel - toasted!"

My ears perked up. Woe be unto the newbie who disrespected The George in this house. I started to roll out of bed, anticipating some righteous carnage. Then I noticed how I wasn't rolling out of my bed. Whoops.

Regret nibbled at the lining of my stomach. He'd managed to convince me, mostly, that I hadn't committed rape or anything. So, why did I feel so uneasy? I huddled under the covers, counting cracks in the ceiling. Our house, villa really, was kind of majestic, in an ancient, crumbling way. Most of us with rooms on the second floor kept a bucket or two around for the winter rainy season and the inevitable leaks.

Aside from the bed, the room contained an armoire, a nightstand with a swing arm lamp, and a desk with a matching chair. That was it. Some of the furniture had been left by previous tenants. We had also received some hand-me-downs from our ever-widening circle of friends and colleagues on the continent, as well as from some of the newbies' families. Other stuff like linens and dishes we picked up at IKEA.

Andrew's room was as bare as mine. None of the survivors of Sunnydale had much in the way of material possessions. Somehow though, seeing this room saddened me. This room didn't belong to an ascetic minimalist.

Collectibles and twenty-face dice should have covered shelves, floor to ceiling. There should have been mint condition action figures, still in their original clamshell packaging, and comic books encased in UV-resistant glassine wrappers. Framed posters, signed by obscure Canadian actors should have covered the peeling gray plaster. A person lived here. A person with distinct preferences and prejudices, a person from whom I'd taken more intimacy than I had earned the right to.

The only personal things in the room were the plastic Dr. Gero mug on the desk with some pens and pencils in it that I found at the Porta Portese flea market and had brought back to him a month ago, and three yellowing paperbacks, also on the desk, artifacts from our first apartment in the city.

There had been a backpacker hostel around the corner with a small bar on the roof top. The place teemed with boisterous Aussies and pounding techno music, twenty-four-seven. My sister cheerfully dubbed it 'Il Nuovo Bronzo'. Neither Andrew nor I much cared for the place, until we discovered a dusty bookshelf in the laundry room with a sign that read, 'Take one, Leave One'.

We each took three books, promising each other that we'd bring them back when we were done. Then Buffy got approval for Council funding for the purchase of the house, specifically for the establishment of a permanent newbie training base. We never did manage to get back to the hostel and return the books, and it took me forever to read the ones I had, with the move and the renovations to make the house livable.

The books on the desk were the three I had taken and read first. We had only gotten around to trading recently. I made the bed before I left, like I could pretend that nothing sordid ever happened here if I could only smooth away the evidence.

I stepped into the shower, and it was perfect. Our ceilings might leak, but we had splurged on the showers. Each bathroom in the house had its own water heater. There was no such thing as running out of hot water here; we had our priorities in order. I reached for the shampoo.

Exactly how creepy was it, on a scale of one to ten, that Andrew had convinced me that we should just use a big communal bottle of the same stuff so the shower would be less cluttered? It was high-end shampoo, especially for people whose main sources of income were essentially charity. It smelled like almonds and was supposed to be sulfite-free. Whatever. I had stopped caring about stuff like that a long time ago, but now the smell of it...it smelled like him. Like me. Like...god, Andrew. What had I done?

He had his own full schedule and duties associated with the Council apprenticeship, but he took time most every day to cook and clean for us. He took care of the house and the people in it, to the extent that we let him.

In Sunnydale, he seemed so weak and damaged and there was such a crazed need under the surface of him to be accepted. I recognized it. I shrank from it. That need was a black hole that couldn't be filled, I knew all too well. Now I was the one with the need, to somehow make amends and set right what I had done.

I worked up the courage to show my face downstairs, and thankfully most everyone had filtered into the main living room to unpack a weapons shipment that arrived from London. The newbies worked like obedient little elves under Andrew's direction, most of the time. Packing straw covered every surface in the room.

He looked up as I reached the bottom of the stairs, face completely neutral. "Hey there, sleeping beauty, your plate is waiting under the pilot in the oven. Didn't want it to get cold."

I shambled into the kitchen, found my breakfast, and sat down at the table to observe the chaos. The girls unwrapped all manner of swords, spears, and killing machinery.

"Look at this crossbow!" One of them exclaimed. I thought her name was Susanna. Suziana? Something like that.

"Norah, here, let me see," said Andrew. "Nice craftsmanship. Purple heart wood, looks like."

Norah? Maybe Susanna had been last month. I lost track after a while.

Andrew tested the weight of the crossbow in his hands, then raised the weapon and sighted down the hallway.

"You'll shoot your eye out, kid!" I called to him. It was the first thing I thought of. At that moment, I had never wanted anything more than for things to be okay between us.

He looked up, flashing me a grin that could have lit up the Mariana Trench. I saw everything there that I needed to see. It would take far more than one night of me being stupid and crazy to shake him. I gave repeated thanks to all the deities I didn't believe in.

The newbies gathered around Andrew and he began explaining where each item was to be stored in the cellar below, and the cataloging system linked with Willow's office in Glastonbury that kept everything organized across the globe. Sure, he could be a pompous dork sometimes, but he was going to make a great Watcher.

He was endlessly patient with the girls. He never forgot their names, and he remembered personal details about each of them, like food allergies and countries of origin and which ones didn't get along and couldn't be paired together for sparring practice.

It was all more than I could have managed. I made an effort, and some days it was an effort, to be as kind as possible to the newbies. It was hard for me to really connect with any of them. They always finished the program and got placed out in the world. They also had a tendency to die. It wasn't negligence in our training that caused it, just statistics. The good guys didn't always win.

Andrew was the one who made the calls to the families. Buffy had taken on the responsibility in the beginning, but she had to be away so much these days that the task had fallen to him. He even made the final arrangements if the girls' families weren't around, and he attended all of the funerals. He was often the only one there.

Life seemed to go back to normal after that, normal for our house anyway. It was summer and there were so many people passing through, new friends and veterans alike. Our days flowed by mercifully lacking in leering or double-entendre. Our personal space bubbles shrank, as though our bodies had decided, independently of our brains, that increased casual contact proved just how much we were over what had happened. We developed mutual amnesia.

Once though, on my way out the kitchen door, I knocked over a bowl of strawberry preserves. I asked him if he minded cleaning up since I was late to class. He kind of bowed and it was such a weird thing to do, it made me laugh.

As I slammed the door, I could have sworn I heard him say, "As you wish" which of course was just silly. I had read the book; it was one of our six. Never mind having seen the movie so many times I could recite the entire thing myself. Later, I began to suspect I had imagined it all anyway. I kept the door between my bedroom and the bathroom locked at night. It seemed like a good idea, in case I lost my mind again.

**********TBC


	4. Chapter 4

"Okay, catering..." Andrew paused to jot a note onto his yellow legal pad. "Vegetarian option has been confirmed - they'll do the pesto."

"Good! The olive tapenade was so very olive-y." Buffy wrinkled her nose.

The three of us sat around the wrought iron table on the terrace, running over our checklists for the evening. We were all more than a little anxious. It wasn't yet noon, but the sun was warm and I was grateful for the pink bougainvillea-covered pergola that covered us. I shifted in my seat, ready to get moving. The meeting had run over by two hours already.

"Now," my sister continued, "I'm on airport taxi duty beginning, wow - in less than an hour. Giles's plane gets in, I drop him here, and then Will gets in at 3:30, Giles takes the car back to the airport to pick her up. By that time, I'm over at the Ragano's to meet the Japanese ambassador's helicopter. Just as a reminder guys, I'm babysitting him all night, or at least until we get the go-ahead for the second phase of the Osaka base."

We had been preparing for this evening non-stop for the past two weeks. It was the first large-scale event we had ever done. Usually, Giles came in for a couple of days each month to meet with Buffy and Arturo Bianchetti, our nearest neighbor and a devoted friend to the Council. He had been the one who helped us to acquire the house and acted as guide in necessary interactions with the government of our adopted country.

This particular visit had somehow blossomed from our typical dinner on the terrace for twenty or so, to a soiree for two hundred guests. The new Council, our Council, had attracted more attention and interested parties than it knew what to do with. Buffy was a bit of a celebrity in certain circles, and having accepted the role as organizational figurehead, was expected to spend an increasing amount of time, as she put it, "babysitting". This left Andrew and me to play hosts.

"Finally, security," Andrew said. "The girls have their assignments. The first shift goes on at 1730 and the second shift starts overlap at 2300. We've got six teams of two around the perimeter, three additional down at the front gates. I emailed Faith the-"

"Faith! Oh I completely forgot." My sister reached up to the elastic that held her hair, pulled it out, and laced the band through her fingers making a cat's cradle. "I'm sorry, I talked to her this morning and just...argh! Her flight is still fogged in at SFO; she's never going to make it in time to run security. Never fear though, we have a contingency plan." She took a breath. "It turns out that Connor is in Zurich this week." She paused gauging our reactions, then held up her hands.

"Now don't even start!"

Andrew and I shared a look. It said, 'Oh, great'.

"I really need you guys to be flexible about this," Buffy scolded us. "He leads well, and we need it to be one of our people-"

Andrew didn't appear convinced. He pinched the bridge of his nose with his thumb and index finger. He rarely ever argued with my sister, but strangely, these days, when he did, she often listened to him. He seemed to have a calming effect on her.

"Buffy, I get it. I mean, gabba gabba, one of us. But he's kind of intense, especially for this kind of thing, tonight. He can be so...well...blunt."

She was not in the mood to listen. "Oh please, you're still sulking because he kicked your ass in the Bakon workshop back in March."

"Oh, right, because sparring with the preternaturally gifted? Totally fair!" The old whine began to edge in.

She was beginning to lose patience. "Sometimes we have to fight things that are stronger than us and win, or-"

"Or we get dead," he sighed. "Yes, I know."

I couldn't leave Andrew out there by himself. "Honestly, Buffy, the guy can be kind of condescending. Some of the girls, I don't know-".

"ENOUGH! They take orders just fine. It's all about the professionalism tonight. Try to remember what's at stake here, please?" She was at the end of her tolerance for debate, time to give up and move on.

I had no doubts about Connor's competence. He was probably the best demon hunter on the planet, definitely somebody you wanted on your side. He taught specialty martial arts workshops for us all the time, and he had ridden to my personal rescue more than once.

I was more disappointed that Faith wasn't coming. Faith was fun. Our newbies loved working with her. She was always ready with a dirty joke, a joint, a wild story. Of our old friends, she was one of my favorite people.

Connor saw everything in black and white. He was usually very quiet. He was an expert in his field, and it wasn't that the content of his feedback was incorrect or lacking. He just didn't seem to get subtlety. If he had an opinion, or if he wanted something, you knew about it right away.

"Fine, whatever," I said to Buffy. "We'll make it work. You need to leave for the airport in twenty minutes. Meeting adjourned?"

"Meeting adjourned." She agreed. "Thanks, guys." She slipped the elastic back over her hair, pulling the ponytail higher and tighter at the crown. It made her look even more stressed than she probably was.

Arturo Bianchetti poured deep red wine slowly into the glass. It was my second. His family made their own wine, among other things, and he frequently brought bottles over to dinner. He was a big man, probably about the same age as Giles, and had long reddish-brown hair, a bristling beard, and a rich radio DJ voice. I thought he looked more like a Viking or a biker than a country gentleman. He always insisted on calling me Aurora instead of Dawn, rolling the 'r' dramatically.

His name meant something like 'white bear'. It wouldn't have surprised me if he went furry during the full moon; the Bianchetti family was kind of mysterious. I got the idea that he and Giles had been involved in some kind of work together many years prior, but the details were never clear. Per Giles, they were friends to the good guys and the rest was classified.

"Aurora," he boomed, "It is a beautiful party. You are to be congratulated, but that dress, that dress is..." He shook his head making tut-tut noises.

I wasn't thrilled with him calling attention to me like that, but it sort of made me laugh too. His own wife's dress was about the size of a postage stamp, not that she wasn't gorgeous in it.

"What are you talking about? I'm more covered than most of the women here, even the grandmas!"

The dress in question was white, with spaghetti straps and a princess-line bodice. The full skirt was long enough that I could crawl around on the ground if I had to and not flash anyone. The silver sandals weren't nearly as high as I would have preferred, but I could run in them if necessary.

Other than feeling a little Sandra Dee, I had been okay with the reflection in the mirror when I finished getting ready that evening. Was Arturo trying to warn me the fabric was too transparent? Were people seeing my underwear?

"It could be more conservative at the top, piccola," he answered. "But forgive me, I have only sons. I don't really know about fashion for young ladies. Perhaps you should return to your guests, and this old man should keep his mouth shut."

"She isn't mingling enough," came a voice from behind me. "Arturo, tell her."

"This is just a refill mission, and-" I turned to face Andrew.

Oh. Damn.

I hadn't seen him since we'd changed for dinner. He looked good. Well, with the black-on-black and all that pale skin and hair he looked vaguely villainous, but in a really good way. Something tightened across my chest.

God, I was not going down that path again. I had to work with Andrew. I had to live with him, day in and day out. He was absolutely off limits, and, suddenly, I wanted to unfasten the buttons of that silk shirt with my teeth, audience or not.

How awkward. My eyeballs must be popping out of my head like the cartoon wolf during Red Ridinghood's torch song. I took a giant gulp of wine and tried to recover. "I hate mingling," I said.

He smiled and patted my arm, seeming oblivious to my near meltdown.

"Aww Dawn, just make sure that the first person you walk up to looks even more shy and nervous than you feel. Get them to talk about themselves and then once they relax, you can move on to your next guest, knowing you've done a good thing."

Andrew Wells was giving me social advice. I must have fallen into some parallel dimension between the florist and the party rental company. I drained my glass and set it on the table, where Arturo graciously refilled it.

"Did you find that on Dale Carnegie dot com?" I asked, irritated.

"No," he replied. "Martha Stewart." He gave me a goofy half-smile, rolling his eyes in self-deprecation.

There you are Andrew, I thought. I was beginning to miss you.

I had forgotten Arturo standing with us, and I jumped when he spoke.

"Ah, my friend, it is my fault. It is far too easy to monopolize our Aurora. We try and keep her for ourselves - yes?"

Andrew tilted his head to the right, looking at me, his expression unreadable. "Yeah, Arturo. I know exactly what you mean."

I grabbed my glass and made a hasty exit. Surely somebody at this party needed me to chat them up.

Most everyone in attendance was older and they looked like the type of people for whom this kind of function was a regular part of their social calendar. They were mostly strangers, our new friends. I found Arturo's wife, Maria, sitting with Giles and his girlfriend, Rebecca Bloom.

I'd never met Rebecca before and she seemed to be in possession of far more details about me than a casual acquaintance ought to have. The more I tried to gracefully slip away, the more intent she seemed on keeping me pinned to the table. I desperately sought rescue from Giles, but he was distracted by Maria and one of her sons.

Finally, Rebecca said, "This has been such a lovely event, darling. When are you and Mr. Wells planning your event?"

"Our what?"

"Your wedding or, I'm sorry, so many of your people are Wiccan, perhaps hand-fasting is the more correct term?" Her brown eyes glittered, as if we shared juicy girl talk all the time.

"Um, no. No, we're not-"

"Well of course, I just assumed from the way you are together. You're both so young, but the two of you act like an old married couple, darling. A happily married couple."

When had she ever seen us together? Crazy bitch. What did Giles see in her? I downed the rest of my wine in one shot.

"You see, Rebecca," I told her. "We've reached an impasse. We still can't agree on whether I'm taking his last name or he's taking mine." I turned on my heel and stalked away, leaving Maria Bianchetti snickering and Giles confused and blinking rapidly. I wondered if I could get Buffy to tell Giles how much his girlfriend sucked.

The night finally began to wind down and our gathering dwindled to about thirty. People took off their shoes and ties and lounged around the terrace in small groups. The air cooled and somebody lit a fire in the fire pit. I checked in with the security teams, making sure Connor hadn't pissed anyone off and was pleased to learn that he was behaving himself.

At the far end of the olive grove, I ran into Andrew bringing out bottled water to the girls stationed around the perimeter. I tried to ignore him, deciding that I needed another glass of wine and headed for the kitchen. He followed me.

The caterer had cleaned up and departed, leaving the house dark, except for some sconces down the hall. I wandered around the kitchen, picking up wine bottles until I found one that wasn't empty. The Bianchettis must have brought a hundred cases, considering all the empties.

"Dawn, are you okay?"

"Yeah, just tired. Too many people, you know? Too many strangers."

"If only we were among friends?" He asked gently.

"Or SANE persons!" I finished the line, temper flaring. "Who the hell is that Rebecca woman, anyway? Why does she think she knows anything about us?"

He shrugged. "I didn't really get to talk to her much. Was she rude to you?"

"Oh she's a nasty piece of work! And, of course, this is only the beginning." I fumed. "It's going to get so that we're so busy schmoozing we don't have time to actually, you know, fight evil or anything!"

"We'll manage somehow." His voice was so tranquil, it was mesmerizing. "We always do. I'm sorry tonight wasn't so great for you though."

He reached out with one arm and hugged me to him. The gesture was unexpected. We never hugged, yet it felt so natural, as though we had done it for years. A little shiver sang down my spine, a warning. But that warmth, that blissy warmth, god it was nice.

"Well, I got to see you all dolled up and lovely, so, no, not all bad." I don't know why I thought it was okay to say that. It sounded absurd. Everything that had come out of my mouth tonight, completely absurd.

"Likewise." I heard him say.

It was so late that the string quartet had gone and someone from the remnants of the party had brought out a guitar. The music sounded Spanish and sad and made you want to kind of sway back and forth. Or maybe that was the wine. I laid my head on his shoulder.

His other arm came around me. "Better?"

I nodded, words departed. The proximity of him sent tendrils of delicious prickling heat over my skin. I could feel his heart racing. Eye contact in that state was impossible, but I reached up and brushed my fingers through the hair at his temple with one hand.

He nuzzled into my touch, tilting his chin until he caught the tips of my fingers in his mouth, sending waves of shock and pleasure all through me. I'd never felt anything like it. I heard a sound like a cat mewing and realized it was me. I was losing my mind. Again.

"What is this, Andrew? What are we doing?"

As if on cue, a woman's scream sliced though the night outside.

He groaned. "I don't know, pretty girl, but you have the oddest timing."

Then, blessedly, we reverted from fevered night versions of ourselves and back into simply the people who had to run toward the screaming.

The pool was red and swirling by the time we reached the source of the disruption. It was all kind of anti-climactic. The pair of Ne-pahark demons sent to assassinate the Japanese ambassador must have been jetlagged. Buffy had taken the ambassador home at least two hours before. Most of those who were left were veterans and got those who weren't to safety. We watched Connor and the girls slash and tear happily and nobody died except for the demons. Go team.

"You know, I said to Andrew, "Buffy made the right call. Connor's been great tonight."

"Yeah," he said. "I think the guy actually had a good time."

"As hosts," I said, "We kind of rock." I felt exhausted and giddy all at once.

Andrew smirked. "Martha Stewart, eat your heart out." Then he took my hand and led me back to the house and up the dark stairs.

"Hold still, it's stuck!" He hissed.

"Story of my life. I'm cursed, cursed I tell-ow!"

"Wait, I almost got it. Stop distracting me, it's caught again!" He tugged the zipper. He might have been joking with me, but his hands shook. Glad it wasn't just me.

"There."

"Excellent! Remind me to give you a raise, Smithers." I giggled.

His mouth was on my shoulder, lips pulling down the strap of my dress. My skin tingled at his touch and I felt his body move as he giggled with me. It was like we were both high on lust.

"Oh thanks for that image! You do know how this works, don't you? Your lucky...um...partner, has to be ready for you and that's hardly-"

My dress dropped to the floor.

"Feels like you're doing just fine back there, partner."

"Okay! Okay, you caught me," he said, wrestling with the hooks on my bra. "I always wished Monty could be my sugar daddy."

I spun around to face him.

"I knew it!"

I nibbled his ear lobe as my hands went to his belt. His pants and underwear joined my dress on the floor. He drew breath, loudly. I caught his gaze then, and it sent my heart skyward. The last traces of laughter faded in my throat. We stood in our varying states of nakedness and I lost momentum.

Who was this person? He was so different from the guy who regularly scolded me for leaving spoons in the sink and the screen door unlocked. More importantly, why couldn't I keep my hands off him?

I closed the gap between us and hugged him. Immediately he hugged me back. Confusion spiraled in my head. I needed this to go better than the last time.

"Andrew?" I hated how unsteady I sounded. "You want this, right?"

"Yeah." He sounded as unsure as I felt.

"So we should keep going?"

His fingers made nervous circles on my shoulder blades. He buried his face in my hair, hiding in it.

"Andrew?"

"No," he said at last. "You were upset, before."

"Not at you! Not because of you. This is just so weird for me, so complicated."

"Then we should probably stop."

He was so accepting. It wasn't so much that I didn't want to go to bed alone, I didn't want to go without him. I didn't think I could stand it. I clung to him and he anchored me.

"Will you be mad if I keep going anyway?" I asked.

"No." He said. "Will you be mad if I do?"

Then I could feel his mouth on the nape of my neck again, down over my shoulder, my collarbone. It was so good my knees began to buckle, and then he stopped.

"No!" I hugged him harder.

"There will probably be consequences, Dawn."

Damned voice of reason.

"I wouldn't let me sister hurt you. I would stop her." I promised.

"You would try."

I kissed the corner of his mouth. "Yeah."

Holding onto to him, I stepped back until I found the edge of my bed and pulled him down, the weight of his body pressing me into the mattress. He fit me perfectly. I wanted him inside me, but he moved off.

He knelt on the floor, and pulled me forward until his mouth was between my legs, kissing the insides of my thighs. I shivered, but I wasn't cold. My teeth chattered loudly and I clenched them together. How embarrassing. Women were supposed to swoon or just scream a lot when they were turned on - right? I closed my eyes. What the hell was my problem? I felt him slipping my panties off, then his lips and tongue were back. He licked my flesh up and down, exploring me, and then I wasn't thinking about teeth or nakedness anymore.

Abstract lines and star bursts flashed behind my eyelids. His fingers slid into me. I wanted to ask if he could see the diamonds, crystallizing in the architecture, but what came out was senseless babbling. There was thrusting rhythm, almost too much and then I crested.

Wave after throbbing wave washed over me. I wanted to tell him about the bright constellations, repeating in infinity like snowflakes. I wanted to share it with him, but there was nothing left of me to speak.

By the time I was able to move again, Andrew had climbed onto the bed beside me. He lay on his back, head turned, watching me. I reached out until I touched his hand and our fingers intertwined. I meant it as a friendly action, a sign of, 'Hey I'm thankful that it's you here with me in the middle of this latest bout of crazy'. Instead, the physical contact woke me up. I rolled up and over to straddle him.

"You know this has to go away, right?" I ran my hands over the black silk of his shirt and began unfastening buttons, then let him sit up just enough to remove the garment. He was so luminous, so...oh. Oh. Wow.

"Oh my god you have a nipple ring!" I squealed.

Okay, so I sounded all of about twelve, I didn't care. It felt like I had just been given a pony for my birthday. Or a Ferrari.

"Holy crap! Have you always had this?" I was aware that certain parts of me were probably drenching him and I didn't care about that either.

He chuckled, and it was a velvet kind of sound.

"Well, no, I wasn't born with it."

I slapped the side of his thigh in frustration and his body twitched under me.

"When and where? And how? What were the circumstances?"

The corners of his mouth twisted upwards, but he didn't answer. I couldn't stand it any longer. My head dropped to his chest and I licked around his nipple, tasting flesh and metal. He quivered, and the motion raised goose bumps on my arms.

"Tell me," I begged. I flicked the ring back and forth with my tongue. Strangled animal noises began to come out of him.

"Please, Andrew?"

"I lost a bet in Mexico," He gasped.

"Impressive. Seriously, in case you hadn't noticed, I'm just...yeah." Giving up on talking, I bit gently around the soft tissue of his areola.

"God!" His back arched off the mattress.

His fingers clutched in my hair, not pushing me away, but drawing me closer. There was a point where I could feel that my teeth were nearly breaking the surface of his skin and part of me wanted to. It wasn't that I wanted to hurt him, but that he seemed to enjoy it so much. Something in my head wanted to know how far he would let me go. Dangerous.

I grabbed his hands and pinned them on either side of his shoulders. Andrew watched me, mouth open, breathing. I was no slayer, but I had plenty of training and from this position I could have killed him at least three different ways. Not that killing was what I wanted.

He was so fragile, simply by the nature of his humanity, just like me. He lay beneath me, waiting. I ground against him, slick and wet. Teasing. He moaned and tried to sit up, but I held him down.

Between my legs, I could feel his cock harden and lengthen and I watched his eyes close. He was stronger than me, but somehow I had all of the power. He would let me have whatever I wanted, and that was far more terrifying that any monster I had met.

Hadn't I been so distraught the last time? Hadn't I promised myself I wasn't going down this path again?

"Open your eyes," I whispered.

I needed to see, to know if I pushed him too far. I slid onto him slowly, relishing how my body stretched to accommodate his body. There was the sharp reality of taking another distinct being inside of me.

I watched his eyes, waiting for him to stop me or look like he wanted to stop me. When he didn't, I began to move. I would consume him completely. I would devour him and he wanted me to.

Below he was moving with me, following me. Then I could feel him begin to convulse and I followed him, lost in sensation and the blue of the shapes and symmetry only I could see. Then we disappeared.

Afterwards, we curled together under the blankets. I should have passed out, but I was wired.

"Tell me about the bet." I demanded.

"No."

He was a brick wall I couldn't scale or knock down.

"Okay, okay. Fine, no Mexico stories. But you have to share some stuff, or this is all going to start freaking me out. I don't do casual hook-ups. You have to talk to me so I know it's you here in this bed and not some stranger. I don't even feel like myself right now."

I was so pathetic, so absurd.

"Me either, Dawn."

I propped myself up on my elbow. A terrible idea occurred to me.

"Is this us?" I asked. "Are we being controlled? Did someone put the whammy on us? Oh god, Andrew, did you-"

"No!" It was the first time I ever heard him actually sound angry. Then, more gently, he said, "I don't think this is a spell. Spells sting all over, like an old sunburn."

He was right. It would have been so much easier to blame everything on magic though.

"Yeah, this is more like..." I struggled for words.

"A cocaine buzz. Er, not that I would know," he said.

"I've never done anything like this before," I admitted. "I mean, sex, yeah, a couple of times. But it wasn't like this. This seems like something else."

He was silent and it was an uneasy silence. It chilled me.

"Hey, Andrew? Remember about the sharing?"

He remained motionless beside me, arms at his sides.

"So you, you've done this before?"

He sighed. "Sex, sure, yes. Like this, no."

Finally. I would have been lost if he hadn't given me something.

"How many times? Or, wait, no, just people. How many people?"

He didn't answer, but he caressed my arm up and down. It seemed like he wanted to tell me, but couldn't.

"More than one?"

"Yes."

"More than ten?"

This brought a groan and an eye roll from him.

"No."

Good. Progress.

"More than five?"

"No."

"Okay," I said. "We've established that you're not a slut, which is nice."

He snickered. Maybe he liked the game, I thought, infinite twenty questions.

"More than four?"

"Yes."

"So I'm number five?" I leaned in and kissed his forehead.

His breath warmed my skin as he answered.

"Yes."

"Do I know any of the other four?" It was a delicate question. But the way things had been going, it might be safer to know.

He swallowed.

"Yes."

"More than one of them?"

"Yes."

"More than two of them?"

"Yes." His voice had gone flat.

"More than three?" I pressed.

"No."

The movement of his fingers on my arm slowed. His skin felt clammy. If he had been a map, there would have been a hand-lettered notice across this road: 'Here Be Dragons'.

"So, was at least one of them a girl?"

This brought another eye roll and a ghost of a smile.

"Yes."

My next question was mostly based on odds and percentages.

"Was it Faith?"

"How did you know?" He sounded amazed.

"I am the all-seeing eye," I intoned.

"Obviously. Um, how necessary are the details, Dawn? It's kind of embarrassing, and it was just that once."

"Eh, another time, maybe. Don't feel bad though, I certainly wouldn't kick her out of bed."

"Oh really?" He sat up on his elbow, mirroring me.

"Settle down," I smirked, "I don't think she's into that."

Had I just given him the ultimate in blackmail ammunition? Was I now in for the leering and the endless double entendre? No, I decided immediately, not his style.

He was smiling, but it wasn't reaching his eyes. Then I realized the problem. He really didn't want me to guess the final person, which told me exactly who it was. It was a name nobody ever spoke in our house.

"I know the last one," I said lightly. "Your turn now."

He let out a breath and then kissed my forehead as I had kissed his, but much harder. There was raw emotion in it, things I couldn't read.

"Do you really want me to guess, Dawnie?" He asked.

You'd think I'd asked him to hike through a live minefield. Oh, right, I had.

"Yes." I'd made him squirm out of my own self-indulgent need for bonding. The least I could do was offer the same.

He seemed deeply preoccupied with the texture of the blanket.

"Okay...um, yeah. It was after Santorini, last year, after that coven took you and tried for the ransom. He went in with Buffy. When they found you, she ordered him to get you home while she went after the last of them. The two of you took the over-night boat back into Brindisi. That first time, it was mostly a gratitude thing, and because you just wanted to know what it was like. You grew up in such a fishbowl, so many layers of protectors. It was the first chance that you had and you took it."

I starred at Andrew, trying to breathe. How could he know?

"It wasn't awful," he continued quietly. "The guy isn't an asshole, not like that anyway, but it wasn't what you expected. You wanted to feel like the rescued princess, and you didn't. The second time was the next morning before the boat docked. You couldn't quite believe he wasn't who you thought he would be. You thought all that angst you saw in him, all that drive would translate into fireworks. It didn't, and all that was left was the guilt, because, for some totally bizarre reason, you and your sister think of him as family."

The last part of his diatribe was strangely bitter. Andrew flopped onto his back, remote again.

"You read my diary?"

I never told anyone. It had seemed easier to forget that way.

"No," he said.

"Then how? Why do you know all of those things? Am I really that transparent?" I felt so lost. Consequences indeed.

"Probably only to me," he said. "You focused on your classes and our projects here after that. You punished yourself. You haunted this house for months. You even felt guilty for not being heartbroken. You're still this walking ball of guilt. I feel it every time you touch me, and I wish you could just let it go."

My head was spinning and spinning.

"Let you go?" I whispered. The thought of losing him...god, my head. My head hurt. I didn't have Andrew, so I couldn't lose him. My chest hurt. Everything hurt.

"No! that's not what I meant." He pulled me to him, and with his touch, I could breathe again. How had I ever imagined that I had overpowered him before? Absurd. Like this entire night.

"Listen, Dawn, I just...um...in theory, I want to tell you that you should, I don't know, stick to your patterns. Your hand in the shower is so much safer than anyone else's parts and friction. It kills me that you were hurt. I hate it."

"Connor didn't do anything mean to me," I said. "Just so we're clear. He's, well, it's not his fault. He's not a bad person. He's just so...stoic."

Unexpectedly, the tension between us evaporated. I relaxed in his arms.

"Don't feel bad, dahlink," he mimicked my Natasha. "I vouldn't have kicked him out of zee bedt either, but it zeems like you kind of boinked zee Beowulf."

And just like that, he was okay again; content to hold me and snark. Good.

"Beowulf? Really? You had one final opportunity for quote and ref as we're falling asleep here and the best you can come up with is Beowulf? Who are you, and what have you done with Andrew?"

"I'm tired, it's been an Old English kind of night. You wore me out. How about Perseus? Shall we go with you boinked Perseus? Or maybe Galahad. Pick a hero cliche, sew one of his thousand faces on him already and call it done."

"Only if you promise to never say 'boinked' in my presence again."

"Mmmm, deal."

In the days that followed, I worked to untangle my personal precepts, to reconcile my feelings with my actions. Like that far more famous Aurora in the fairy tale, I began to wake up and notice the world around me and the people in it.

Andrew was technically older than me, but he had always been so child-like. The rigors of daily survival in our world had forced him through profound evolution. I didn't see the silly, trivial person I once knew and I missed him.

He didn't speak in ref and quote much anymore, except to me and under his breath in a subconscious way. When he did revert into it, he didn't bother to footnote. He seemed to expect me to keep up and finish lines, like returning a serve in tennis.

That part seemed to mean something to him. When I participated, I acknowledged our relationship, however weird and tenuous it might be, the part that wasn't about sex at all.

Whatever else he was, he was my friend. Funny, I couldn't remember exactly when that had happened. He instinctively knew how to cheer me up and when to back off and leave me alone. How long had I been the object of that razor-sharp focus? Months? Years? He'd already proven he knew me well. Too well.

He was like a damned cold reader. He promised me that it wasn't magic, that he was just observant and I happened to be in his line of sight most of the time. Instead of Death Star schematics rattling around in that sandy blonde head, there were details of my behavior, my moods, my preferences. It was unnerving.

I should have shut him out, gone and left Rome behind. I should have told him his destiny was in Garbage Compactor 3263827 and bailed before either of us got hurt. But I was addicted to his hands, his mouth, his skin, and the euphoria they brought and so I trusted him. I trusted myself. I was the instigator of this madness, after all. I still didn't know why I had done it, I had simply followed an impulse.

I think that maybe I had expected Andrew to kind of take over at some point, like the heroes in the violet-colored novels my mother once kept in stacks under her bed. My only other experience had been more like that.

Our favorite demon hunter certainly preferred the driver's seat. Not that there was anything wrong with that. I was just different. When Andrew and I were together, it felt like I was leading him into depravity, like we were sliding toward some kind of ledge, some canyon a thousand miles deep. I needed him, he filled more than one void.

When I remembered my old life, I missed Janice. She had escaped apocalypse after apocalypse with her family, only to be killed by a drunk who was driving in the wrong direction one night during the second month of her senior year in high school. She had planned to go to Arizona State, pre-med.

We would have grown apart anyway. We would have had so little in common by now, and it wasn't like I could have told her about my life. Most of it was classified. The world had become divided into our-kind-of-people and the not-so-much.

There's a reason people make sure their lovers and their bff's are separate entities. When your main confidant is also the person you're sleeping with, things get confusing. I didn't dare tell anyone else about us. I wasn't ashamed of him; I was ashamed of myself.

Even if I had someone to tell, someone with a non-Scooby perspective, even someone without the prejudices of history, eventually this imaginary confessor would ask the one question I couldn't answer out loud. It was the normal question that normal people asked in these circumstances: 'don't you love him?'. And then I would have to answer, 'no, because I know better'.

RJ Brooks taught me all about love. It was vapid and hollow and didn't mean anything. It was just a spell and it stung like an old sunburn, just like Andrew said. I had my sister's example, highlighted for me in bright neon. Buffy was always suffering and in pain over the men in her life. Love and attachment equaled pain.

Even the philosophers agreed with me, attachment was the origin of suffering, feelings clouded judgment, yada yada yada. Hence the old parts and friction theorem. Because that was working so very well for us.

Andrew was right about that night on the boat after Santorini. It had been about trying to fit into a role I never knew I didn't want, a role written by Disney and Cosmo and Harlequin. Some old men in a pub somewhere should have warned me, keep to the road, beware the moon and, oh yeah, the falling anvils.

**********TBC


	5. Chapter 5

There were easily three inches between us on the green checked picnic blanket. The sun blazed down on us, too hot. We had been newbie-less for two whole days, with eight still to go. Faith had swooped in and taken the girls on a field trip to somewhere in Tunisia.

Andrew made a lot of noise about going with them, something about Mos Espa, Yardangs, and the props in the bar at the Hotel Sidi Driss. But of course, he had to stay. I needed his help with interpreting an ancient demon text, and he, after all, had the whole affinity for demons thing going.

We had been left alone to try and avoid falling on each other like rabid animals. Or not. Neither of us seemed to be able to move, but we didn't hide from each other very well either. It was a slow crazed dance of advance and retreat.

When Xander showed up the second morning to meet with my sister, I was sleeping late with both my bedroom and bathroom doors locked.

Xander called, "Guys? Anybody home?"

I pulled on my robe and staggered to the top of the stairs.

"The girls are in the field with Faith," I told him. "I...I think I have a cold, maybe the flu." I sniffed loudly. Anything to explain myself.

"M-kay. I'll be out in the pool." He called up. "I came in early so I could get some laps in. Buffy's meeting me in a couple of hours."

This was news to me. It was also obviously news to Andrew who appeared from his room to stand beside me, looking groggy and rumpled. Buffy was supposed to be in London.

Andrew didn't look at me, but as Xander walked away he said, "Maybe we should um..."

"Yeah," I said. "Meet you down there."

Across the garden, Xander climbed the ladder out of the pool. He sauntered, tanned and graceful and dripping to the other end and dove in again, perfect jack knife.

"Caught you looking."

Andrew bumped my shoulder with his. I could feel myself blush and he grinned.

"It's not like you weren't looking too!" I snapped indignantly. He shrugged and didn't deny it and somehow that made me blush even more. We watched Xander climb out again, this time drying off with a garish blue and orange towel. He settled into the nearest lounge chair, oblivious to our attention.

"What are you thinking?" Andrew asked under his breath.

"There's a frood who-"

"Really knows where his towel is!" We said it in unison, snickering like maniacal children. I loved cracking him up. I loved how easy it was. This was a valley moment between us, calm, and I was grateful.

"Okay, what are you really thinking, pretty girl?" His voice went low and soft in my ear and it sent little sparkles straight through me. The roller coaster car began ascending another hill. I rolled away from him.

"What am I thinking? That the prosthetic looks good, looks real. That I hope that Will's full-sight charm is worth the headaches she warned him came with the package. That he looks...older and it's weird." I stopped and regarded Xander. "When did everybody get so old?"

The corner of Andrew's mouth twitched and he reached out and ran his thumb over my arm.

"It's not weird, Dawn. We're all older. It just means that we didn't die. It's not weird at all."

"I don't feel older, I feel the same," I said. As soon as the words were out of my mouth though, I knew they weren't true.

"Well, technically, you're older than all of us." He gaped at me mock horror. "You're a total cradle robber!"

I sat up and smacked his perky ass.

"Okay, that's it! Back to the text."

I opened the notebook that had been sitting neglected at the corner of the blanket.

"Ah, yes, the text. You know, there was something I was going to tell you..." He began.

"What?"

"It was about my...um...I can't remember." He ran his hand through his hair, still sleep-deprived.

I knew the feeling. I had made a show of crawling out into the sun to work, and Andrew had followed. Like my sister and so many of our friends, we shared the experience of simultaneous resistance and acceptance of duty. Maybe we were all terribly young to be responsible for so much. But that was the nature of our world.

Most people finished high school, then went to college and got bachelor's degrees, then did graduate school later. Me, when we got to Italy, I went into seminary. The institution's mascot was the patron saint of lost causes.

The Saint Jude Thaddeus School was actually located in County Clare, Ireland. I arranged to study locally. My eventual piece of parchment would read 'Doctorate of Esoteric Philosophy'.

Like most institutions that partnered with the Council, it was a very modest, low profile kind of place on the outside, nothing special at all. There were no entrance exams or applications, it was invitation-only. You could attend classes there or online or study as a visitor at any college in the world you liked.

A separate nonprofit organization called the Howard Foundation provided the grants when necessary. If you decided you needed a semester at Harvard with Dr. Woolley in Sumerian archeology or Cambridge in the astrophysics lab, or whatever, there were no limits, you just submitted the proposal.

There were no sports teams, no fraternity parties, and no grades either. You researched as the spirit moved you, you conferred with colleagues, you attended conferences, you wrote articles, you devised theories, you translated and interpreted. You contributed as you could, and the only tests came when somebody in the field needed to use your end product. Your work either got people killed or it didn't.

My sister burst through the louvered doors that opened onto the terrace, knocking over several terracotta pots filled with red geraniums as she came at us.

"Down at the aqueducts, five of them. Very, very public!" She panted. "It's not over. Xander, the shamshir swords, the ones with the ebony-"

"On it." He called over his shoulder as he headed for the cellar.

"You two, hospital duty. I think he was admitted as Connor Angel, not Reilly."

We stood quickly. This was a drill we knew well.

"Which hospital?" Andrew asked.

"L'Isola Tiberina. Broken ribs, both legs, head trauma, probably. And Andrew," she seemed to remember something else, "Can you see what's up with my Blackberry? I think the calendar is wonky."

She tossed the offending electronic device towards him. He reached up, catching it in one hand, and nodded.

"We've got it," I said. "Text you on the backup cell when we get there." I shouldn't have bothered answering. She was gone again.

**********TBC


	6. Chapter 6

I pulled the long black sedan up to the portico to wait for Andrew and begin the tedious hassle of entering our destination into the GPS on the dashboard. Amazingly, we had never been to L'Isola Tiberina before.

I harbored a deep and bitter running feud with the GPS. Thanks to Andrew, it always called me Dave and fed me totally confusing directions in irritating monotone. When I took a wrong turn, it hummed 'Bicycle Built for Two' while it recalculated. I had humbly begged any number of times for the soothing tones of Majel Barrett instead, or even Marvin, the Paranoid Android. I got nowhere.

Other than my personal vendetta with the GPS, the car was really kind of awesome. A gift from our friends within the U.S. Initiative, the body was fitted with military grade armor, five inches thick, and the wheels were fitted with run flat tires. All the windows and glass were bullet proof, and we even had our own oxygen and fire containment systems built into the trunk. From vents in the front and back bumpers, the car could emit holy water in fog form.

Originally, the vehicle sat seven, but we ended up refitting some of the space with weapon storage, so really only five fit comfortably, six if passengers were really friendly. The stereo? Guaranteed to induce blinding, ecstatic awe. It was the kind of stereo that, the faster you drove, the better it sounded.

Andrew tapped on the window and I pressed the button that opened the door. There were no outside handles. He was in uniform for the task at hand, charcoal gray suit. Italian. Dark sunglasses. Whole shtick probably cost as much as the damned car. Yet another mask, but a necessary one.

"Try to watch your speed this time, okay, Emma Peel-out?" He was in work mode and kind of snappish.

I released the brake and steered down the driveway, onto the dirt road that meandered past our property. He opened a compartment where the glove box would have normally been, folding out a built-in laptop. He fitted the accompanying earpiece to his head and began typing, searching the hospital staff files for the right administrator and direct line. He located his target and dialed.

"Signore Costa? Parli inglese? Oh, thank goodness! My name is Bruce Angel and I've just received word that my brother is in your care."

'Bruce Angel' was American, barely. He sounded like a mutant love child of Frasier Crane and Cary Grant and had a tendency to say things like 'my good man'. The Italians loved Bruce. Bruce's job was to cajole and convince police, hospital, and other authorities to give him, and thereby us, what we needed, when we needed it.

Our people couldn't be left in public hospitals; they healed far too quickly and drew the wrong kind of attention. In the next hour, we would arrive at L'Isola Tiberina. I would flash the passport that said my last name was also 'Angel' and gain access to ICU, or wherever they were keeping our patient. I would collect any additional information about the situation from Connor, if he were conscious, forwarding to Buffy. Then I would keep guard and wait for Andrew, well, 'Bruce' to finalize the ambulance transfer to St. Achatius and get us out of there.

I have been told, quite forcefully, in no uncertain terms, that the traffic in our Eternal City constitutes a crime against humanity. I learned to drive here; it's all I've ever known. According to HAL, the drive was supposed to take approximately fifty-five minutes. I made it to the front door in thirty-one.

As always, once the phone work was finished, Andrew mostly kept his eyes closed. I think I heard him praying. In Sumerian. Whatever.

We left the car at the curb. It was secured with Willow's wards; no one would mess with it. When we found the front desk, we parted company, I headed for Connor, and 'Bruce' toward the administrative offices, with his attache case containing a dozen or more sky blue envelopes, each filed with hundreds of Euros in cash.

These envelopes helped pave the way for our requests to be answered promptly. They helped people forget that we showed up a little more often than your average American expats, and that our last names kept changing.

I didn't have Andrew's artful touch with the hospital staff. They always made me wait for at least a few minutes, even just to tell me that I had to wait. The nurse directed me to a hard plastic chair down the hall from Connor's room and I sat down obediently.

The room smelled of stale cigarette smoke and pine cleaner. An old man sat on a plastic bench against the far wall. Between us was a wobbly plastic coffee table with a couple of magazines that looked to be at least three or four months old.

A tiny ancient TV was mounted to a stand in the corner, the picture fuzzy. I only noticed it because the movie playing was in English. A man, I think it might have been Harrison Ford, was talking with a woman on the screen, their voices tense.

"Remember when you were six? You and your brother snuck into an empty building through a basement window. You were going to play doctor. He showed you his, but when it got to be your turn you chickened and ran; you remember that? You ever tell anybody that? Your mother, Tyrell, anybody? Remember the spider that lived outside your window? Orange body, green legs. Watched her build a web all summer, then one day there's a big egg in it. The egg hatched..."

"The egg hatched..." said the woman.

"Yeah..." said Harrison Ford.

"...And a hundred baby spiders came out... and they ate her, " said the woman.

"Implants. Those aren't your memories; they're somebody else's. They're Tyrell's niece's. O.K., bad joke... I made a bad joke. You're not a Replicant. Go home, okay? No, really - I'm sorry, go home."

The woman on the screen looked so sad, and I knew exactly how she felt. She couldn't go home, she didn't even know where it was anymore. Stupid Harrison Ford. Stupid monks, not even original.

And why hadn't they downloaded this movie into my brain? No sense of irony whatsoever. I had found an unreasonable abundance of random George and Gene bits in there over the years.

"Laziale o romanista?"

It was the old man. He had woken from his nap and wanted to watch the afternoon soccer match. I nodded, numbly, unable to consider the question. I didn't follow the municipal or regional teams. A lot of the girls in our house did though.

This was supposed to be a really crucial game, they always were. He found the remote, and switched the channel. A.S. Roma in maroon and yellow was winning against A.C. Milan, but the goalkeeper's knee wasn't expected to hold.

"Miss Angel?" They were ready for me.

Connor was still asleep. I went to the window to watch the city, the strolling men in their dark suits, and the tourists in their puffy white sneakers. Normal people doing normal stuff. Sometimes I longed for that, not just for me, but for all of us, for the guy in the bed I should have been able to love, but couldn't.

I shut the curtains, warding the window locks. It was an adequate job, but it wouldn't hold back anything very strong. My magical kung fu was not especially powerful, compared to the things that often came our way, but my work would most likely be fine until the transfer ambulance arrived.

I approached the side of the bed. If he hadn't been, well, Connor, I would have thought he was close to dead, battered as he was. You could barely tell there was a person under all the tape and gauze. The machines beeped steadily, proving it. He was very hard to kill.

The first person I ever kissed was a vampire. It didn't seem so outrageous that the second person that I kissed was made of vampires. It was practically a step up.

He was like me, an invented, designed thing. Our childhoods, our memories, our neuroses - wonder who they had been copied from? Some lawyer's niece, some monk's nephew? In Santorini, he had been so courageous and brave, round-eyed and ruby of lip like a Pre-Raphaelite knight.

I'd managed not to cry in front of that ridiculous coven. They were idiots. I was mortified that there were too many of them for me to handle alone and I required extraction by my sister.

I never doubted that she would come for me. She always did and that made it worse. I couldn't endure rescuing much longer.

I don't even know why I cried on the boat, except that I was tired and angry and, as usual, feeling helpless. I don't think Connor intended to seduce me. He'd sat on the edge of my bed, first quietly patting me and then caressing, his hand traveling over the curves of my back. At least he knew enough not to try and talk about it, not that he was the kind that would have talked much anyway.

We had never been close. His temperament was so rigid, so much like Buffy's when she was younger. Everything was serious with him, all of the time. It was so familiar; I'd grown up with the Bronte-stern and the broody as determinate markers of masculinity.

He had kissed my hairline and I was moved by this sense of, yes this is how my story goes. Of course it's with him, of course it's like this, it's practically legislated. Call me Dawn Capulet with my Paris and my medieval arrangement. This was what it was supposed to be like.

When he dipped his head the second time to kiss my cheek, I moved so that he hit my mouth. On the surface, it was perfect and sanctioned. I was caught up in the dazzle and romance of the idea of him, and the exquisite form of his body against me.

Andrew was wrong about that part, it hadn't been 'not awful', and it had been good, especially the first time. It was everything we should have been together but somehow, at the end it was empty, and that was confusing. It felt like we consummated not a bond between us, but an imposition by forces outside.

Later, I thought that maybe he had the same sense of fated-ness. He had performed the role of gallant deflowerer out of a kind of duty to which he submitted. Because we were expected to be these people, expected even more by ourselves than by the world. His affection for me, surprising tenderness, seemed real, but his heart belonged to someone else, I could tell.

He didn't deliberately reveal it, but it was there and maybe I was disappointed that I was okay with that too. That was the problem, the one that left me the proverbial walking ball of guilt. I had experienced that grand Hollywood moment and was okay with it being a one-time deal, I didn't desire another one. So confusing.

I looked at Connor and the wires and tubes radiating out of him, thankful that he never seemed to harbor any leftover longing or resentment. As twisted as it was, it felt like I had somehow rejected my sister, or at least her ideals. Being with him would have been kind of like being with her, in a less incestuous and more heterosexual way, obviously.

In the hallway, I could hear Andrew talking with the nurses. Next time we showed up here, and there would, of course, be a next time, we would be familiar faces. He would be able to address all of the staff by name. I listened to him chatting with them, being "Bruce', all debonair, just a grownup, doing his job.

The noise must have woken Connor. He sat up, wild eyed, panicked. I had the horrible feeling he was going to point at me and start screaming about green glowing light, but instead he grabbed my hand. He was trying to say something, but it came out in gasp and gravel.

"You're going to be okay," I told him. "We'll get you out of here soon. Try and relax."

It was a stupid thing to say to anyone in as much pain as he had to be in. Relax? Right. His hand gripped mine in a vehement fist, crushing my knuckles. I wanted to pull away, but instead I rested my other hand on top of his.

"Connor, I'm here, okay? I'm right here."

The nurse came in with what I hoped was painkiller. She worked quickly on the other side of the bed. Her silence telegraphed her disapproval, she didn't think we should be moving him. In any normal situation, she would have been right.

He tossed restlessly, moving his lips, but nothing came out. He tried to sit up. God, I hated hospitals. I hated this part of my life. How come at career day in school they never warned you that you could end up being a professional brave face? It sucked.

We had arrived at the hospital, assuming Connor wouldn't die because, in general, he didn't. He hadn't died even once, to my knowledge. I had begun to trust precedent far too much.

He was still trying to talk to me. His eyes drooped, the medicine finally hitting him. He slowly began to let go of my hand. Then, as if he had forgotten something, struggled awake again.

"Dawn. Dawn, you have to stop. The Summoner...smells like demon...don't trust him...you don't know...his father..."

The Summoner? It was never good when you could hear the capital letters. I wanted to soothe him and didn't know how.

"Connor-"

"Do not trust him!"

What was happening to him? He seemed so scared.

"Don't trust who, honey?" I rubbed his arm, tasting the endearment, saccharine and false in my mouth. I wasn't a pet name kind of person, and I had just discovered it.

"The Summoner. Dawn, he's dangerous."

Andrew appeared in the doorway. Connor turned from me, and seeing him, uttered a kind of strangled moan. "No! No, you can't let him...you can't...he has the knife...Dawn...stone knife, blue jewel, stone knife, blue jewel, stone knife, blue jewel... stone..."

He drifted as the morphine drizzled through his veins. Worry twisted in my gut.

"Are they ready?" I asked Andrew.

Andrew was silent, staring at us.

"Andrew?"

Andrew nodded and stepped aside as the techs came in to prep Connor for transport.

**********TBC


	7. Chapter 7

Andrew had plenty of faults and flaws, but they didn't typically include the Great Male Silent Sulk. He hunched in the seat, body twisted away from me, arms crossed. He never acted like this. Since the day we all set foot in this country, he had gone cool and detached. It was like the Watchers had drained the fear out of him when he signed up. Except not now.

Right now he was on the verge of some kind of breakdown and I didn't know how to help him. He'd turned up the radio, too loud for conversation. Moroccan house music blasted in my ears, reminding me of the mariachi static of southern California.

Connor was safe in bed in the right hospital, heavily guarded and attended by physicians used to treating our people. Andrew and I were on our way home to well deserved rest, and, damn it, there were far too many places for him to hide from me there. I steered off the road and pulled behind a stand of cypress trees. To our right lay acres of vineyard.

"What?" I said. Might as well get right to it.

Andrew let out a breath. "Do you believe him?" He asked.

"Believe what?"

"What Connor said, do you believe it?" His voice was constricted, each word forced.

"Connor? That was the morphine talking. It didn't even make sense."

"Dawn, hello? Demon summoner - right here. I think it was pretty clear he meant me."

Oh, how could I be so stupid? Connor had been all delirious and babbling about demons...and knives. Hence the massive wiggins going on beside me.

"No! Andrew, no, not you." My hands gripped the steering wheel. I wanted to reach across the seat to him, but his body language clearly said hands off.

"So you don't believe it...that I could..."

"No! Connor just has a head injury, that's all! That's all it was."

"Yeah, because it never happened before."

With a quick motion, he opened the door and got out. He started to walk off down the road, toward the edge of the Sabine Hills in the distance, then seemed to change his mind. He returned and leaned against the frame of the vehicle, with his back to me. I got out and went around the front of the car to him.

"Andrew?"

He didn't answer. I approached him slowly. He looked up when I was a couple feet away. I reached out to touch his shoulder in a lame attempt at comfort and he straightened and jerked away.

"Don't touch me! Just leave me alone."

I couldn't do that, not in a million years.

"It won't happen again," I said. "You aren't that person anymore - neither of us is what we used to be. It won't ever happen again."

"Won't it? Connor...he...experienced some kind of vision. You were there! He warned you away from me." He hugged his arms into his chest like he was in pain.

I shook my head. "You won't hurt me."

His answer came out in a hiss. "You can't know that."

"You won't hurt me," I said. I stepped in close to his body, letting my hands go to his shoulders. "You won't hurt me," I repeated.

His eyes were liquid, intoxicating.

"You won't hurt me," he said, echoing my words.

Had I hypnotized him or had he hypnotized me? I couldn't remember. I was entranced. The night breeze rippled hair across my face. Andrew reached in to tuck it behind my ear. It was a careless, automatic gesture and it shouldn't have meant much of anything but it caught me.

He stopped for a moment, as confused as I was and then it caught him too. There was an almost audible sound, like when the power goes out and then on again. My lips brushed his, soft at first, both of us maybe scared the other would pull away. His mouth was like satin over my skin. Our eyes met, and I think we both registered shock.

His hands slid around my waist, drawing me closer, and the second kiss was harder, more insistent. His tongue parted my lips and he drank me down. Oh god, why hadn't I kissed him before?

I mean, our mouths had actually been all over each other, but never like this. This was so intense, so personal. I was drowning in him, drowning in the pulse of his body and some wall I never knew was even there crumbled.

I relinquished something to him and I didn't know what it was, only that he took it and I wanted him to. In the next valley, a village church bell chimed midnight. Part of me wanted to follow that cosmic hum it set off in me like a child of Hamelin, following the piper. But Andrew was still suffering and that was intolerable.

I shifted and turned us, hopping up on the hood of the car. I opened my arms in invitation. He stepped into them immediately and I wrapped my legs around his waist, enveloping him in a full body hug.

"Here we are, again." I murmured.

"Looks like it." He agreed, softly.

"Inconceivable!" I pronounced it with the lisp, hoping for a hint of a smile from him.

Instead he found my mouth with his again, fierce and possessive. I sucked at his bottom lip and I felt his tongue teasing my upper one. Need swelled in me. He tasted earthy and sweet, but he pushed my hands away when I started to unbuckle his belt.

"No."

"No?"

"I'm sorry. I can't."

"What?" Wow, I was winning prizes in intellectual acumen all over the place here.

He shook his head. "It's...too much tonight. I'm sorry."

"Oh," I said, feeling stupid and guilty like the usery exploitive pervert I so obviously was. "Um...me too. Sorry, that is." Time to go home. I was making things worse. I broke away from him, ready to make the drive home.

He caught my wrist. "Wait."

I waited.

Andrew went to the still open car door, reached in and flipped the lever to open the back door. He crawled into the back, pulling the front passenger door shut behind him.

"Dawn, come here."

It was a simple request. The imperative quality in it completely short-circuited me. I wanted him so much. I launched myself into the back seat of the car. I heard the door close behind me, but I wasn't sure if I did it or he did.

Then I was in his lap, my knees on either side of his thighs. One of his hands was in my hair, and his other hand traveled under my skirt, over the top of my thigh. I thought he said he didn't want to. What was this?

"Andrew?"

His voice was husky and breathless in my ear. "Shhh. Just be still for a minute, pretty girl? Please?"

He covered me in light, tender kisses over my mouth and chin, over and over, until I was so dizzy I would have fallen if he hadn't held me up. My jaw went slack, my body tensed. I shut my eyes. He slipped his hand inside my panties and I couldn't breathe in, or maybe I couldn't breathe out.

My head swam. I put my hand over his, trying to push it further down. He pushed his index and middle fingers inside of me. I moaned, and my hips rocked instinctively. He pushed his fingers in all the way, and it sent shudders through my body.

This wasn't what I wanted. I wanted him, and for some reason, he couldn't. This was what he was able to give me instead. It wasn't enough, and it was confusing because he chose to do this rather than nothing and I didn't know what that meant, except that I was going to let him.

I rested my head in the curve between his shoulder and his neck. He matched the timing of his thrusting fingers to my own rocking, making circles with his thumb. There were circles in his hair, which was all that I could see. Spiraling ones. Little nautilus shells of heat and bliss, circling over and over.

The first ripples of pleasure began flowing over my senses. I wanted to cry out, but it died in my throat. I twisted and thrashed hard against his hand. I should have made him stop. I didn't want him doing this because he felt sorry for me, but it was so good.

"So sorry, pretty girl. So sorry. I'll make it up to you." He was kissing my cheek, down my neck.

"You...you don't have to do this. You can stop, you don't have to-oh..." I quavered. Pathetic.

His hand slowed. I thought it was going to kill me.

"Do you want me to stop?"

Funny, how familiar it all seemed. Except, okay, not funny at all, and I didn't even have the energy to be ashamed anymore.

"No."

"Okay," he said.

I turned enough to wind my arms around his neck and surrendered to the sweetness of his hands and mouth. I didn't understand his choices or his reasons, but let I myself be carried out into the ocean of him again anyway.

"Campari is so disgusting," I told him later, attempting to regain some sense of reality.

"I know," said Andrew, handing me a glass of it mixed with soda from the sedan's mini fridge. "But it was this or the AB neg, leftover from like months ago, when Spike brought that-"

"Ugh, don't remind me." I sipped the bitter drink, wincing as it went down.

Andrew shrugged, shaking his glass gently so that the ice clinked. "It's the nature of the company car. People tend to have company in it."

"Eww!"

"What, nothing squick-worthy in th-"

I carefully set my glass in the drink holder and pounced. I could think of so many fun ways to shut him up.

"Hey! Hey, come on, there's a beverage here..."

"So send me your dry cleaning bill, Bruce."

He sighed, and it sounded wistful and deflated all over again. Damn. I leaned against him. I took his hand and brought it to my lips, kissed his knuckles and then turned it over and kissed the palm.

He rested his chin on the top of my head.

"Connor scared the daylights out of me, Dawn. I couldn't stand for you to get hurt. I'd...I'd take a phaser blast for you. You know that, right?"

"I know," I said. "And if the monster under the bed crawled out hungry for you, I'd shove my hand down its mouth and choke it so you could get away, or you know, blast it with your phaser."

He chuckled, but it wasn't a happy sound. "We're so helpless, aren't we? Really? We train and we fight and we usually win, but...not always."

"Yeah, and I mean, not just compared to slayers and vampires, but the whole world and all the normal bad stuff, like brain tumors and aneurisms."

"And knives," he added tonelessly.

"And drunks, driving the wrong way at the wrong time," I said.

"And bullets. We bleed so easily. We get hurt so easily. The people that are supposed to protect us? The people we trust? The people we let in-" A sob came out of him then. "They hurt us the most, and we're defenseless."

That got my attention. Guilt purred and rubbed along my brain like a cat. Who had I been fooling? Whatever was happening between us, it was wrong. I was wrong, and destructive, and somehow hurting him without meaning to. We sat together in the back seat of the car, me still mostly in his lap, our hands clasped together.

"What are you thinking about?" I asked finally.

"Do you wanna live in my head, Dawnie? I don't think you do."

Fine. Infinite Twenty Questions then. I don't know why I couldn't stop pushing him and why, in the end, he could never resist. It was like a compulsion in us.

"Anyone you're thinking about in particular?"

"Yes."

Three guesses as to who had betrayed his trust so much, and the first two didn't count. I didn't want to think about it, it sickened me. The thought of anyone so much as...god, my head hurt. I drew a breath, and then another. Something in me beginning to spin violently.

"He hurt you?"

Silence.

"Andrew, tell me."

He didn't look at me, but his hands tightened around mine. "Yes."

Savage rage flared in my mind like some bright and shiny new bauble. It lapped along the folds of my sanity. It was delicious. It coated my lungs and caffeinated my veins. I wiggled over him until my lips came up and grazed his ear.

"Do you know, what I would do if I could?"

Andrew seemed to sense the change in me. I heard him gulp before he answered.

"No."

"Find a spell. Can you guess what kind?" Heat spilled over me, and then something ugly. Ugly and hungry.

"No."

"A spell to raise the dead. I've done it before. Do you know what I would do with it?"

He shivered. "No."

"I would bring him back just so I could take his skin off all over again, except slower. I would do it with my fingernails. Scratch off his skin in little pink strips for what he did to you."

My words came out vicious, like snapping jaws, and for a moment the world was filled with bloodied biting teeth. Chrysanthemum petal lines vibrated and then exploded over the backs of my eyelids. Ugly. Terrifying.

"Stop!"

What in the hell was wrong with me? Any normal person would have tried to be comforting. Maybe they would have made declarations of love and caring and, I don't know, just tried to be kind. Me, I had to go and offer to re-murder his abusive ex. Annie Wilkes much? God.

Andrew lurched for the dome light in the ceiling, switching it on. He trembled all over as he held my shoulders, squinting at me in the yellow glow. He didn't say what he was looking for, but finally seemed satisfied enough to turn off the light.

He lay back on the seat lengthwise and pulled me over him, so that my body covered him like a blanket. His arms hugged me tighter and tighter. It felt like he was going to break my ribs before he relaxed. I lay on top of him stunned. Waiting. His pulse fluttered under me like a trapped bird.

"Don't say stuff like that, Dawn. Not ever again. Promise me."

"What?"

"Promise!"

"Okay, okay. Resurrection spells go bad all the time. I wouldn't actually do anything like that anyway." Now I was abashed and shaken. What had I said? I barely remembered, and that was frightening too. "I just-"

"No. Don't. Don't even think it."

"Fine. I promise. Why?"

"That kind of anger, or whatever that was?" His voice cracked, going hoarse. "It leads to the dark side."

For just a few moments, he had been afraid of me. Really afraid. And it made my insides want to crawl away. I buried my face in the crook of his neck, unable to say anything or even apologize.


	8. Chapter 8

The knife slipped from the purple-black skin, down into the pad of my thumb. Blood welled up, dark and red. It throbbed as any deep cut throbs.

"Ow!" I dropped the knife and sucked at the pain.

Across the kitchen, Andrew glanced up from stirring a pot of red sauce on the stove.

"I told you to let me sharpen that before you started on the eggplants."

"Yeah," I answered around the end of the thumb between my teeth," but I got impatient."

"You always do," he said. He brought out the first aid kit from under the sink. "Here, let me see."

"So not necessary. Really, you don't need to-ow!"

"It's just anti-bacterial gel."

"It burns." I said.

"Here's a band aid. Give me the knife."

"Hurry up, Maria's supposed to be here by noon with two more baskets of zucchini."

Andrew pulled a sharpening stone from a drawer and began running the blade over it. Xander's iPod, plugged into our little kitchen radio, played tinny twang. Neither of us liked country music much, we just left it on to fill the torturous silence between us.

Hank Williams took the opportunity to explain how, no matter how he struggled and strived, he wouldn't get out of this world alive. The music of pain? Yep.

The girls would return in approximately thirty-four hours, Xander was bringing Connor home from the hospital that evening, and we were even expecting Buffy in sometime, very late of course. We would have a full house again, and it worried me.

Andrew and I were not yet back to talking much, so we hadn't discussed what had happened and made a plan for what to do about it. I hated not having a plan almost as much as I hated the non-talking.

With Connor in the hospital, we had thrown ourselves into familiar chores. We relayed messages since satphones don't work interdimensionally. We translated and interpreted demonic texts.

We hung out with Xander, who was spending his Council version of shore leave fixing the leaks in our roof. We shuttled back and forth to the hospital to sit with Connor as he recovered. We drank cups and cups of bad hospital coffee.

Connor remembered nothing about the night he was transferred, or even the fight that got him there. It was either really unfortunate, or really, really convenient. I just wanted to forget about it.

At night, we shared my bed or Andrew's, whichever we happened to fall into. It was chaste sleep. We chaperoned and protected each other.

Ours was a bipolar, awkward dance, mercurial shifting from the playful serve and return of ref and quote that made up our private language, to huddling together, completely unable to address the several giant pink gorillas in the room.

Attachment equaled suffering, no joke. Some friend-with-benefits I was turning out to be. And why did people consider that such a bad thing away?

What if I was possessed? Weren't you supposed to get all violent and horny like I had been the other night when you were possessed? What if I went randomly evil? What if the knife Connor had ranted about was just a weapon of self-defense? Was I endangering Andrew? Should we tell someone? Should I be quarantined?

While I waited for him to finish sharpening the knife, I went to the massive marble sink to begin washing the bucket of yellow and orange bell peppers waiting there. I could have waited on the peeling and chopping; it wasn't like there wasn't plenty of other stuff to do. Tomorrow was birthday night.

We were fanatical celebrators in our house. Each equinox and solstice, Rosh Hashanah, Thanksgiving, Chanukah, Christmas, Yule, Imbolc, Ostara, Republic Day; everything but Halloween was observed. Birthdays, however, reigned supreme. One night, each month, we honored the birthdays and half-birthdays of everyone residing in the house.

Andrew started the tradition almost as soon as we moved in and he was adamant about keeping up with it. Barring apocalypse or other crises, we gathered once a month for dinner and cake with candles. Presents weren't necessary, but presence was.

If a person was absent, death was almost the only acceptable excuse. Hot date? Dates were invited, the more the merrier. Fighting evil? Better have it good and defeated by seven sharp. Meetings? Um, no, best not to even try that. You had to be there. So many times, it was the last time for somebody.

In my head, I ticked off ingredients and tasks still to be completed. Wash peppers, chop peppers, finish peeling and dicing eggplant and zucchini, try not to get Andrew killed or worse. Basil had to be found; our patch just outside the backdoor had finally bolted.

Hopefully, Maria had a pot or two she could bring over. We were making timpano, three of them. The biggest one would be vegetarian, hence the mass chopping project. The second would be gluten-free for our birthday girl, Melodee, or was it Mindy?

Locating sources for gluten-free stuff was actually easier here than back in California. All you had to say was 'senza glutine'. The final one was going to contain all manner of sausage and other various animal bits, designed to placate the meat-asaurus rex otherwise known as Faith.

Timpano was the type of thing most everyone would eat, in some form. One of the girls had shown us the movie, "Big Night", on her laptop the summer before, and since then we were always trying to perfect bigger and tastier ones. Our native friends rolled their eyes and made noises about authenticity, but they always ate seconds.

Dessert would feature gluten-free princess cake and my favorite, chocolate torte with ground hazelnuts baked into the batter. You punched holes in the cake right after it came out of the oven and drizzled hazelnut liquor over it. Until the past month or so, I had been positive it was better than sex.

"Here." Andrew set the knife on the counter beside me and I jumped and screamed like a final girl.

"Sorry." He touched my arm, eyes wide.

"It's okay, I just didn't see you there is all."

"Is that flour in your hair?" He reached in and carefully pulled out the elastic holding my hair in a messy knot at the base of my skull. I let him; my hands were full with the peppers in the sink.

"Probably, yeah. Sifted the flour for the torte earlier, when you were in the shower, but I dropped the sack. It's all cleaned up now though."

He combed his fingers through my hair and standing very close, began to braid it into one long thick plait down my back. I could feel his breath, warm and near.

"Klutz."

It didn't sound like an insult, the way he said it, not at all. I swallowed hard. I adored it when he fussed over me like this, not that it had happened very often, mostly not ever. There was something so innocent about it, and so...not. It was a fast track to me losing any kind of composure I might have had. My pulse leapt.

He fastened the end of my hair with the elastic and lifted the braid over my shoulder, letting it fall lightly over my breast. His other hand smoothed over the small of my back in an endless figure eight. I waited, holding my breath, watching him out of the corner of my eye, like a gazelle watches a lion.

The sun streamed in through the kitchen window, so bright, so blinding. It would burn us both to cinders. We'd never survive.

Neither of us was much with the self-control apparently. I had to try. We didn't have time for this today, never mind the distinct possibility of magic and/or demonic influences being involved. This sure as hell wasn't what you'd call normal.

"Andrew-"

"Please." He seemed so serious, so intense.

"Mixed messages much? You don't want, and then you do, except only every third Friday and never during a new moon. I don't get it!" I was being completely unfair. Stupid defense mechanism.

"I'm sorry."

He didn't sound sorry, he sounded, for once, just like a guy. You know, the kind who is always trying to get laid? Like that. And god damn it, it was probably going to work, but that didn't mean I wasn't pissed.

His lips found the juncture where my neck met my shoulder. Heat flared down my body, but I pushed him away and dumped the bowl of water holding the rinsed peppers, draining it into the sink. Then I lifted it out and carried it to the long oak worktable in the middle of the kitchen. He followed, capturing me again, pressing the backs of my legs into the table. His mouth was on my throat.

"Andrew, we can't keep doing this! Not without, you know, dealing with it! A very detailed discussion needs to happen."

He was going to win. I had no will power against that persistence, only because it was him being so crazy strange and persistent.

"I know," he said, and then turned his attention to the hollow of my throat. His hands rubbed over my backside in a way that distracted and sent tingles of desire building in me.

Giving up, I kissed him, relaxing and tensing up all at the same time. He kissed me with urgency, as if fighting to hold territory claimed in battle.

My breath came faster as Andrew's hands ran under my top, his fingertips grazing my ribs. Then, unexpectedly, he turned me so I faced away from him. He pushed me down, bending me over so that my elbows rested on the kitchen table. My heart raced.

Wild energy filled the room and the air went out of it. Something was happening, not just us, something elemental and humming. The hem of my skirt bunched like a belt at my waist, creeping higher as he ground against me. God, I wanted him like a junkie wants another hit.

"Andrew? Andrew, what are you doing?"

"What do you think, pretty girl? I promised to make it up to you, the other night? Isn't this what you want?"

That voice, that low night voice, naked and raw and here behind me in the bright daylight. God, and here I thought it was me who was possessed.

I couldn't give any other answer, I wasn't capable of it. "Yes."

He pulled at my panties until they fell around my ankles. With his other hand he found my breast and squeezed. It felt amazing and so good and kind of wrong.

"You wondered more than once if it was even the same person in your bed, from the one out here in the daylight, didn't you?"

"Yes."

How had he known that?

"And do you believe it now?" His knee came up between my thighs, leaving a streak of heat across my skin.

"Yes."

He was turning my infinite twenty questions game back on me and I had never known how much I wanted him to. I writhed, pushing back against him.

"Spread your legs, pretty girl".

I did, dazed, and then he pushed inside me. I felt like I was being destroyed, destroyed and remade with each stroke. He slid over and over this one spot inside me and it sent buzzing sparkling little stars through my nerves.

There would be nothing left of me. I would give him everything he wanted, except that I knew somehow that this was more for me than him. He was playing some kind of role that I didn't understand, but I wasn't going to complain.

"Hey Dawn," he said, and it shocked me all over again because suddenly he sounded so normal and himself and only slightly out of breath. It sounded completely separate from what we were doing.

"Yeah?" I gulped.

"Watch the wood grain."

Wood grain? What was he talking about? Oh. I looked down and tried to pay attention and saw that it wasn't really a table below me anymore.

"There's a river, black and golden like tiger eye. It's rushing and rushing." I said.

The grain of the oak-that-wasn't-oak was so pretty. Then the world tilted and I was looking down at someone's long brown hair, braided, beautiful. Wait it was me, and it was...oh...so tight...god.

How could I see me from down there? The only person, who could possibly be seeing this, be feeling this - oh. I was him, or in his head. So confusing. And how? Then his consciousness swirled over mine and his mind was racing, and that flying mind was me.

I saw, no, felt. Remembered the melamine table in a back corner of the basement, smell of soldering iron and burnt flux in my lungs, sound of components and hard drives humming and humming...a car driving past on the street. Brutal. Real.

The sound of my breath...sound of his breath...skin slapping skin...pleasure and pain of him buried inside of me. There was pain in my heart because I knew it didn't mean the same thing to him, it was just a way to get off, and to be in control. Always that, over the table, just like this. No, _so_ not like this. Whatever I felt for him then, this is so much more.

Thought I loved him, can't love her. She'll rip me open in the end, and it's okay. It's okay, I'm going to let her, I really am. Had me at fugue state. Can't believe she's letting me be this rough with her. She thinks the little marks on my body that she leaves with her teeth and nails are scary.

She can't know from scary - not ever. So pretty, so close to saying something stupid and I don't know why I want to say it so much. No promises, can't deliver anyway. Want to promise her everything. Can't. She's ripped me open already. God, so pretty, so pretty, pretty girl.

Suddenly I was slammed back into my body, back into myself, even as my body slammed into the edge of the table one last time. Ever drop into the middle of your own climax? Totally disconcerting. My arms and legs didn't work and I guess his didn't either because we tumbled down, both of us, in sweaty heap on the stone floor.

The air was heavy and thick. Neither of us could stand. By unspoken agreement, we crawled until we could rest our backs on the cabinets under the sink. We surveyed each other warily. I spoke first. "That was um...yeah...wow."

A strained moment passed before he cleared his throat. "Yeah."

"How did you know?"

"Know what?" He asked.

"Know that would happen when you said to look at the wood grain."

"I didn't, I swear. I... I never dreamed anything like that would, I mean... I just noticed the table a couple of days ago and thought you would like the... um... patterns in it. That's all."

"I'm scared," I said.

"If you're not scared in our world, you're not alive." He spoke it like a mantra.

"You say that to every newbie who comes through this kitchen."

"Doesn't mean it's not true."

"I don't think I could handle it like that very often, Andrew. I mean, even the whole metaphysical part aside-"

"Me either."

We sat together, catching our breath.

"What do you think it was?" I asked.

"Um, telepathy? Like in episode 159 of Next Gen, when Picard and Bev-"

"It was number 160, 'Attached'." I cut him off.

"No it was-"

"Frakes directed the stupid thing! Go check the laptop on the counter."

Why did I know this? I hated knowing this.

"I, uh... can't really move, Dawnie."

I took his hand and squeezed it with the strength I had left. "Okay, telepathy. But why now? What does it mean?" Why I expected him to have any answers, I had no idea.

"Why anything, any time, Dawn? Do you live in this house? Did we ever get an explanation for the floating furniture back in April?"

"No, but that was-"

"How about the time we all became box turtles for three days? That was much weirder than some minor mind sharing. I still can't look at a piece of lettuce."

"Oh, excuse me, minor? You call that minor? From what I saw, it was pretty damned major!"

"What did you see?" He asked.

"You first." I so did not want to tell him what I saw. And why didn't we remember what the other experienced?

He blushed, eyes fixed on the floor.

"Well, um...First there was the river, and the lights. Then I...I mean you...you were watching Faith lead sparring practice. I couldn't tell where or when. It could have even been, you know, a long time ago."

"Uh-huh." Good. Fairly tame, my subconscious.

"And then you took a shower."

"Oh," I said.

Uh-oh.

"And then you...um...touched yourself. It was..." His eyelids drifted shut. "Amazing."

Okay, so I was a little embarrassed, which was ridiculous given what we had just been doing, but I was mostly relieved. He hadn't seen anything too dark or ugly.

"And you should probably stop worrying so much about...well...hurting me. You're kind of pathological about it." His eyes stayed shut. He chewed his lower lip self-consciously. "I'm not as fragile as you think I am, sweetie."

Busted. I wanted to scramble under the sink and hide. Instead, I leaned over and kissed his cheek, lightly scratched by the beginning of stubble as I pulled away. I liked it, the realness of it, defying the dream state that took our control from us.

"Your turn." Andrew returned my hand squeeze gently. His palm was sweaty, not that I cared. Mine was too.

I forced a grin and it was stiff over my teeth. I crinkled the corners of my eyes to make it more believable. I punched his arm playfully.

"Oh yeah! You are so totally in trouble, mister! Fugue state! Fugue state? I _knew_ you were faking!"

"Okay, see, I can explain th-" He squirmed and dropped my hand to button his fly, as if concerned about the safety of the bits under the fabric.

"I'm sorry I hit you so hard," I said. "I'm sorry for a lot of stuff from before-"

Without warning, he seized me by the waist and dragged me into his lap. Then we were kissing and ignighting all over again.

I broke away. "Um, Andrew? Remember how much work we have between now and tomorrow night? Birthday cakes? Timpano?"

"Work? What is this 'work' of which you speak, woman? Peace! I will stop your mouth."

He managed it then I was overcome by giggles. His mouth quirked in response.

"Only you," I said. "Only you, Star Trek to Much Ado, in under sixty seconds."

"Sorry." He didn't look sorry.

I shook my head violently.

"No, don't be. Don't ever stop, okay? Promise."

He made a dismissive sound, something between a snort and a chuckle.

"Promise." I insisted.

He had my earlobe between his teeth. He released it, flicking it with the tip of his tongue. An involuntary moan escaped me. A normal person would really be growing to hate this roller coaster ride about now. Couldn't we concentrate on anything else?

"Andrew-"

"I promise," he whispered, grinning. "Succubus."

Everything in me went cold. I think my heartbeat stopped. I pulled away from him and crab-walked backward until I hit the 'L' of the cabinets.

Across the room, Andrew's face had gone white.

"Dawn? What?"

"Do you think-"

"No! Of course not! Kidding. Completely." He moved toward me.

"But, the other night...and the whole...I don't know-"

"No! Just bad attempt at humor on my part. I...um wasn't thinking. It was a stupid thing to say, I'm sorry."

I drew my knees up to my chin and hugged them. "What's happening to me? To us?"

"I don't know, but not that." He was beside me, stroking the top of my head. "If it makes you feel any better, I bet you can't even be possessed, you know, because of your origins."

A quiver rose up through my spine.

"That's something else. Do you know, I've never actually seen 'Attachment'? They didn't even bother to create memories of watching the damned show for me, they just dumped all this trivia into my head! What kind of monks would do that, Andrew? And why?"

"Uh, maybe you'll need it in the future? Like the fate of the galaxy will depend on... Never mind. Maybe so you can win some kind of important object at a con. You know something everyone else thinks was made by the Creature Shop and is totally collectible, but you are the only one who knows it's real, and-"

"Cons are kind of like Halloween. Nobody bothers, Andrew."

"Oh. Right, I knew that."

"You know what else?" I hadn't thought I was going to tell him, but it looked like I was after all. "The monks didn't bother with 'Blade Runner'. I saw it in the waiting room the day we transferred Connor. At least, I saw the part were Harrison Ford tests Sean Young. So incredibly creepy."

Andrew looked like he was going to be sick. He nodded slowly. "Oh. Yeah, now I get it. Connor freaked out, then later I freaked out. Then you...I mean, you were okay before then. There's your proof."

"Proof?"

He hugged me and kissed the top of my head. "Proof there's absolutely nothing wrong with you. You were stressed. You were just having a bad fucking day, that's all."

Andrew almost never cussed. It sounded odd and wrong coming from him.

Yet another weird-ass conversation in our steadily growing archive of truly weird-ass conversations. A conversation that was apparently over and resolved nothing.

What if he was wrong, what if I was possessed? Or worse?

What if everything that was happening signaled impending doom and we were so entrenched in denial we were missing our last chance to save ourselves? Well, there was baking to do.

Because sugar? Sugar made everything better automatically.

A/N: Ask and it shall be given you...they keep telling me that in Sunday school. So, I'm asking. No, make that begging. Feedback, review, a kick in the head? Pretty please?


	9. Chapter 9

"I have to leave," Andrew said.

I glanced up from the book of prophesies on my lap. Utter nonsense, most of it, unless you accounted for infinite parallel universes for it all to happen in. So much of it was totally contradictory. As the man said, Cassandra didn't get half the kicking around she deserved.

"What?" I replied, blinking.

When I had settled in with my favorite reading pillows and my stack of dusted, yet still kind of musty tomes it had been mid-morning. I was very consciously not thinking about anything except signs and portents. I was definitely not thinking much about the person who usually slept in the next room, except that recently he slept in this room, in this bed, with me, and neither of us really did that much sleeping. I had retreated here to focus on work for a change, focus on the text. Text girl, that was me. Yep, just here in my room with my books, trying not to melt in his...um..._the_ heat.

The Sirocco had blown up from the Sahara, bring its grit and dust and scorching temperatures like the Santa Ana back home. Of course here, nobody bothered much with air conditioning or hermetically sealed environments in general. You took naps in the afternoon, if you had that luxury, and you went down to the gelateria at night.

If you couldn't quite justify a lifestyle including daily afternoon naps, the second best possible course of action was to stay as still as you could, save for the motion of raising a glass of chilled lemonade to your lips. Beer was an acceptable alternative, if you were a beer kind of person, or, if you were Andrew, you drank a combination of both in the form of a shandy. He gave me a sip of his once. Absolutely vile.

"What time is it?" I asked. "When did it get dark?"

"Close to eleven," he said. "You've been up here a while. I knew you had a ton of reading to finish for that abstracting and indexing project, so I tried to keep everyone out of your way. There's plenty of leftovers from dinner, if you're hungry. I was going to bring you a plate, but then Giles called-"

"You're going?" My mind dropped back into the world like a stone kicked up on a gravel road.

"Yeah, I've got to pack." He rocked back and forth on his heels. "They're like fifteen minutes out." He took my hand and it was warm, but it didn't comfort me.

"Where are you going?"

He turned my hand in his and ran his thumb over the lines of my palm like he was going to read my fortune. "I can't talk about it."

"Right. Watcher training stuff." I tried to swallow and coughed instead.

"Yeah."

"And you don't know when you'll be back?"

"No."

It wasn't that unusual for him to be called suddenly like this. No one in our house kept what you'd call normal hours or schedules. Sometimes he was gone for days at a stretch and I tried to cover for him where I could. My sister remained domestically challenged, for the most part. She tried in the beginning, at our first apartment in the city, but when Andrew moved in with us after his place burned, he made some silly speech invoking that whole, each according to his or her ability thing and she gratefully retreated.

"You'd better pack," I told him.

He hesitated, as though he was waiting for me to say something else, then gave a quick nod of agreement. I trailed after him, trying and failing to see the hostage, the boy, all frantic babbling ego that my sister once let Xander tie to a chair.

It occurred to me that Andrew might have been the first person I ever really struck, and that I was glad I had gotten a chance to apologize for it. It had been a confusing time, for numerous reasons, none that I liked to examine too closely. It was all history anyway.

I watched the cool methodical person before me fold clothes and files, and the tablet PC thingy he used instead of a laptop into a small backpack. It looked like they were taking him somewhere with mountains. And hiking. At least he would get to be out of the heat for a while, and that was a good thing, right? Right?

These missions had never bothered me before, what was wrong with me? This was nothing new. Training missions were the same as any other missions, except that one member of the team was at apprenticeship level. They weren't less dangerous and people were just as likely to not return from them, that was just the way it was.

Watchers took risks just as Slayers did, perhaps greater risks because they were just people, far more delicate and generally lacking in superpowers. When Andrew returned from these missions he was always quieter, more reserved. They didn't allow him to talk about what he had seen or done or survived.

I sat backwards in the chair by his desk, hugging the back of it and rocking on its wobbly legs. Crappy IKEA piece of junk. Andrew slung the pack over one shoulder, looking for that moment like what he wasn't anymore, just a middle class white guy from southern California, gray jacket and worn-in hiking boots, hanging out in Europe for the summer. It made a nice story anyway.

"I hate all the cloak and dagger stuff sometimes." I said with more vehemence that I had originally intended.

"You do?" He looked surprised.

"Well, yeah. I mean...I worry."

"Well, I'm sure it will be fine. Giles is pretty good at keeping us live lion and all."

I watched that restrained detachment creep over Andrew and I shuddered. "I never understood that phrase."

"It's like, better to be a live dog than a dead lion, and even better to be a live lion."

"It still doesn't make sense! And I still don't like it." I was feeling sulky, childish even. It was a pointless reaction, but I was feeling it anyway.

Andrew shrugged. "I kind of do...like it I mean, most of the time."

"But you chose this, it was a conscious choice. After we left Sunnydale you could have left, but you came with us, you didn't sign any contract that I know of, but you might as well have. I was born into it...sort of. It's not like I got a choice."

He sighed and didn't reply.

I shoved my hands into the pockets of my shorts. "I just wish we had a normal life sometimes. I know I'm being selfish and kind of a jerk here, but-"

"You're not." Andrew fiddled with the strap of his backpack. "But, I mostly feel delivered from normalcy and suburbia and status quo. I'm grateful, you know?"

I considered that idea. Ironic, how normal this was, actually. Like so many ordinary men, his life was his job. But I wasn't going to say that.

"Doesn't it all ever get to you, Andrew? All the crazy stuff that happens? All the bad stuff? All the damned estrogen for that matter?"

"Um, hello? Former second vice president of the he-man-woman-haters club, right here. Been there, done that. _So. Incredibly. Lame. And boring_."

He arched an eyebrow at me, and the Watcher mask he had retreated behind slipped a little. Then he was gone again, the way the sun slips behind a cloud.

Why had he brought that up? That stuff was usually so compartmentalized, sealed away in plastic bins, as if separate moments in history could leak into the present and stain our lives here, and the comparative peace we enjoyed. We kept a whole ocean between us and the past.

"Andrew?" Someone called up the stairs. The team had arrived. They were waiting for him.

"So...good hunting or, whatever." I said.

"Thanks." He turned to go.

I couldn't let him leave like that.

"Wait!"

He waited, hand on the doorknob.

"Do something for me?"

"Anything."

My breath caught in my chest. I had the eerie feeling that he might mean it. Anything. Literally. My roller coaster car was about to come off of its tracks.

"Try not to, you know, die? Or get hurt or anything? Okay?"

"Return with my shield, or on it, right?" He asked. He reached out and stroked my cheek.

"Just come back to me in one piece, Andrew!"

The corner of his mouth twisted upwards. He leaned forward conspiratorially and whispered in my ear. "And which piece did you have in mind?"

He got me. He'd made me laugh, in spite of myself. I threw my arms around his neck. "You goof!"

He lowered his head and his mouth met mine and I stopped thinking for a few seconds. Finally, he pulled back, swiping his thumb over my damp lips.

I wanted to say something witty, something non-goodbye-ish, but all I could force out past the pounding heartbeat in my throat was, "You should go."

"Dawn..."

"Go."

He cleared his throat. "There...there's something I need to tell you...but it's weird, I can't remember what it is. Just that it's important, I think." He shook himself, as if to break out of a fog.

"Go," I said. "Tell me when you get home."

I turned and walked away from him, through the bathroom to my bed and flopped across it. I heard his footsteps on the stairs and the sounds of leave-taking from below. Giles was there, and, of course, the recently lucid, new-and-improved Dana.

I waggled my jaw from side to side, trying to relieve the ache. I was grinding my teeth again. It wasn't jealousy, it really wasn't. I just never liked how her eyes tracked Andrew, or Giles, for that matter. It gave entirely new meaning to that image of the live lion.

**********TBC


	10. Chapter 10

I was reading the same line of text, over and over, unable to concentrate enough to grasp it when someone knocked on my door and then opened it without waiting for an invitation. It was typical in this house. It didn't even annoy me anymore. Much.

"We thought we should bring you your dinner."

"And, you know, see how you were doing."

The twins poured into my room and onto my bed, scattering my notes, letting my books slide to the floor. It would take me forever to find my place again; they didn't bother numbering pages so much in seventeenth century Eastern Slavic grimoires. I sat up groggily, attempting to rearrange the pillows to accommodate my visitors, and a tray appeared on my lap. On the tray there was a bowl of what appeared to be risotto, probably with eggplant. Eggplant was inescapable in summer, especially when all of your neighbors grew it and knew your family didn't garden themselves.

Eggplants and zucchini and tomatoes; we might drown in them this year. Sometimes, just sometimes, I wished that In-N-Out was available in Italy, or, hell, even the Doublemeat Palace. It had been ten kinds of yuck, but now that I couldn't have it anymore, I missed it. Sometimes.

Sometimes people brought you trays of beautifully prepared, glossy-magazine-photo-worthy meals made from scratch by other people you...well, people you cared for, and you just couldn't stand the sight of it. But you had to be nice to people too, or at least try.

"Thanks for the rose, Tracy." I said.

I didn't really want to deal with the twins. They were like, fourteen and overflowing with intense crackling energy. They were special, of course, the first occurrence of sibling slayers on record. They were from Delaware, or Vermont, somewhere like that. American kids abroad, probably too young, too far away from home, definitely too much for me at the moment.

Our people were almost never assigned near their homes or places of origin, and they were transferred frequently. There was some deliberate methodology behind it, something to do with similar policies of the ancient Roman armies. I never quite got it.

For us, all roads led to Rome, sooner or later, or more specifically, to our small village outside of the city. There were other training facilities and other bases around the globe, but our house was the center of it all, the bright beacon satellite around which veterans and Scoobies and all of our friends, new and old seemed to revolve around and return to.

"I'm Vanessa," she said, as she nudged at me to scoot over.

I scooted grudgingly. That made the other one Tracy.

Tracy made herself comfortable on my other side. "That's the last one." She pointed to the pink blossom in the tiny crystal bud vase on the tray. The rose was fully open, so expanded outward that its petals looked like they might begin to fall away.

"The wind got the last of them today," said Vanessa.

What did they want? It was exhausting, just trying to pay attention to both of them at once. They were kinetic mirrors of fiery-red pixie-cut hair and galaxies of freckles. They seemed impish and sent by the devil himself to poke and torture me into a better mood and I wanted them gone, as sweet as they were.

"Oh, good, you're still up." My door opened again and Diane came in and sat on the end of my bed. I never had a problem remembering her name. Except for being fifteen and much blonder, she reminded me of Tara Maclay.

I didn't mind Diane as much as Tracy and Vanessa. Hanging out with the twins was like flying a kite in a lightning storm. The hair on your arms stood on end and everything you touched shocked your flesh, even things that shouldn't have been conductive, like paper. Zap. Ow. I dropped the napkin back onto the tray.

We had kind of gotten two for the price of one with Diane. Her mother Mabel served as our staff therapist. Before Diane became a slayer, Mabel had been a well-respected clinical psychologist in Johannesburg, who specialized in women's issues. When Diane was called, Mabel said that she had been called too, that we needed her. She was probably right.

If the twins were the fastest and flashiest slayers of our current class, and they were, by far, Diane was the slowest. Diane might have been the slowest slayer ever, almost human-slow. She spoke slowly, moved slowly, and it seemed to take her far longer than average to think about what you said to her and respond, but she made up for it with spooky accuracy. She rarely required more than one blow to make her kills.

Sometimes I wondered whether Diane and Mabel might be something other than what they appeared to be, but not very often. It was one of those things that you thought of and then promptly forgot again.

"Diane?" I looked at them and the tray in front of me. "What is this?"

I didn't think I could stand even one more eggplant dish. I didn't want anything, except to be alone.

"What's with the Maria von Trapped here? Why are you all hovering?"

"We were just concerned," answered Vanessa.

"You get so down when he leaves," said Diane.

"We understand," said Tracy, "We're army brats."

"Yeah," said Vanessa. "And it's always so hard on Mom, when our Dad gets deployed. She says it's the hardest job in the world, being the one to stay home and pray."

My head was spinning. What were they talking about? Who got deployed? She patted my arm, probably trying to be soothing, but just... not.

"An army wife fights the hardest battle when she kisses her soldier goodbye," said Tracy, "And, you know it's true love when you trade diamonds for dog tags!"

"Hey, we should _so_ all get dog tags!" Exclaimed Vanessa.

"Oh my god, right?" Added her sister.

Oh good lord, they meant Andrew. Somehow, they knew. Hit the lights and cue the Nina Simone, I was going down fast.

"Um... what? No, I mean... we're... um... maybe you guys have the wrong idea..." I stammered. I was NOT going to cry, no way.

The three of them just looked all sad and compassionate and ready to pat my arms sympathetically until they bruised. For all of the times I had tried to be there for my sister growing up, through her trials with Angel and Parker and Riley and Spike and - oh god, here was karmic payback in glorious Technicolor.

I wanted to yank the blanket over my head and hide, but maybe I owed them more than that. Okay, I definitely owed them more. They were trying so hard to... well... not be fourteen, and to be supportive team members. To be nice.

The next state-of-the house meeting though, I was totally going to recommend that we find a different team building workshop facilitator for the next group. Who was responsible for the last one? I tried to remember. Oh. Right. It had been me.

"I'm sorry if we, um, grossed you guys out or anything," I told them.

I pushed the tray to the middle of the bed, and let my forehead fall against my knees. I was not going to cry.

Diane's soft Afrikaans twang flowed over my frazzled nerves. "No, no of course not. You're never inappropriate around us, or anything like that. You're actually very discreet, it's just how you are, you know, with each other. There's-"

"You're sort of our surrogate parents here. You try and make this place, like, homey, while we're here." Tracy interrupted her.

Rebecca's words echoed in my head. "... an old married couple, darling. A happily married couple." As usual, Andrew was right, I lived in a goddamned fishbowl.

"How did you find out, anyway?" My question was muffled by my knees.

"Oh, I don't know, I guess we, I mean, everybody just assumed you've been together forever, like since you came here from - where did you all come from again?"

"California. Sunnydale."

Since Sunnydale? Really? I wondered if these girls would even recognize us from back then. For that matter, would I? Did it matter?

"I'm sorry," I said. "I just can't do this right now. Unless you guys need-"

"No," said Tracy quickly. "No, you're right. We're sorry we bothered you." She grabbed the tray and switched off the light on the nightstand. "You get some sleep, okay?" As she and her sister vacated the room, I heard her in the doorway, "See? I told you, we should have left her alone, 'Nessa. She needs to be alone right now."

"She'll be back to normal as soon as he gets home, she always is," Her sister said, as if I couldn't hear them.

Normal? I wasn't sure what that meant. Not in this context.

I felt a hand on my shoulder. "He'll be fine," Diane whispered.

For a moment, with my eyes closed, Tara was there. Diane and Mabel and Tara and my mother, and all of the healers I had ever known were there with me, and Andrew would be okay, we all would be. For a moment, I believed it, but as soon as Diane was out the door, I switched the lamp back on.

**********TBC


	11. Chapter 11

When I thought about it, I was pretty sure I could pinpoint where people's assumptions came from, the source of all of the rumors. It might have been the night we arrived in L.A. on the bus out of Sunnydale, to crash at the hotel and tend our collective wounds.

When I emerged from the shower, I put on the cotton-poly Lakers pajamas from the plastic CVS bag that Buffy had left for me on the bed and read the note beside it. It said, 'Get some rest. I'm downstairs if you need anything.'

It didn't even bother me that she wasn't there. She was accessible and nearby and that was enough. It might have been one of the first times I was aware and conscious of just accessible being enough.

I tossed the plastic bag and the price tags in the trash and jotted down a note in reply to her on the yellowed hotel stationery: 'Can't sleep. Hanging out next door w/ A. if you need anything.' I underlined the 'you'.

He wasn't sleeping either, which was what I expected. He let me in without a word, and returned to the floor in front of the TV. It was the only light in the room. I sat down on the floor beside him, leaning against the bed.

The screen flickered with images of a cartoon dog in the desert, and then there was a confrontation with some guy that I think was supposed to be Quentin Tarantino. It was all very meta, and I was too tired to follow it properly. Next, a show came on about little girls who were super heroes, and it was funny, if even a little more meta. Then we were watching a boy, who was a mad scientist and built a robot, and at first it was a little too much and then it was a lot too much.

I seized the remote, pressing the first button that my thumb could reach. The picture dissolved into some documentary about groundhogs, or possibly prairie dogs, something cute and furry and ground dwelling.

"Thank you." He sounded dead inside.

I bumped his shoulder, trying to lighten the sense of despair that rolled off of him. "You know life might be kind of messed up when the Cartoon Network-"

He made a sound that might have been either laughing or crying, I couldn't tell. Finally, he said, "Why are you here?"

"I thought I told you about that," I began, grateful for the distraction, "See there were these monks, and um-"

"No. I mean _here_."

"Oh. I don't know. Can't sleep; figured you'd be the same. I-I could go, you know, if you're-"

"And me?"

"What?"

"Why am I here? I shouldn't be here. I should have died, Dawn. Why didn't I die? There was supposed to be retribution. Sacrifice. Karma."

He shifted and looked right at me; like he expected a real, non-rhetorical answer. Someone expected me to have answers, or at least opinions. God. What was I supposed to say?

I took a breath. "Maybe you're looking at it backwards."

"Backwards?"

"Well, yeah. Maybe you haven't earned it yet. Maybe you still owe this world, karmically speaking. Maybe you have years and years of, you know, good deeds you have to do first. Or, maybe, there's no eye-for-an-eye at all. You just try to be better out of... um... enlightened self-interest or something, because being evil is so incredibly lame and boring. Or something." I gulped for air.

He didn't respond. When I snuck a peek over at him to check the quality of my philosophic rambling and its possible calming properties, his eyes were closed. The back of his head rested on the edge of the bed. The only indication that I hadn't put him to sleep was that, after a while, the hand that he had clenched in a fist on his knee turned over and opened, palm upward.

I wasn't sure that it was an invitation, but I covered his hand with my hand, interlacing our fingers and he didn't pull away. We must have sat like that all night, because the next time I noticed, sunlight was streaming though the blinds and someone was calling down the hall that we were supposed to be going out to breakfast in twenty minutes.

I still don't know why I was really there. It just seemed like the thing to do.


	12. Chapter 12

That first night after Andrew left was the last night that I slept. I spent the following day trying to do the mundane stuff: class work, cooking, household chores. By evening, I had devolved into old intellectual cotton candy indulgences, pouring over conspiracy blogs.

Most of my favorites from high school were inactive, but new ones had mushroomed up in their places. It was so hard to kill a good rumor. I dove headlong into the juiciest ones, new evidence that Tupac had faked his death, the Skull & Bones Society was secretly run by reptilian humanoids from Vega, and chemtrails? Totally mass vaccination against the coming plagues.

It was all good, but I needed more. I needed my first love. Long, long before my adolescent crush on Xander, long before Spike, there had been Art. Art was so non-judgmental, so brilliant, so Zen. He listened to everyone and treated them with respect, no matter how nutty their stories were. Art Bell had heard everything and probably seen it too.

When I was a kid, I desperately wanted to call into his radio show and tell him about my life, but I never worked up the courage. My mom probably wouldn't have let me anyway. I liked to think that I could have blown his beautiful mind, but it was probably just raging narcissism on my part.

I huddled in bed with my laptop, playing archived "Coast To Coast" episodes, wrapped in one of Andrew's sweaters. The wool itched in the heat, and it smelled like the god-awful vanilla pipe tobacco he had affected smoking for a while, but I didn't care.

Why couldn't I just chill? Why couldn't I, say, just go get a pedicure or something? I liked the kind where they painted little daisies on top of the base coat. Oh, and rhinestones! Glued-on rhinestones were still trendy, right?

It should have been a good thing, me having time to work things out for myself, to figure out what I was really feeling, minus certain distractions. But I couldn't look at much of it very long. It was all more than a little terrifying, the fits of rage, the probably inappropriate sense of protectiveness, the freaky mind-melding, not to mention the obsessive, unrelenting lust. The worst part by far though? The sense that the object of all of that teapot tempest absurdity was kind of a stranger.

There were so many layers of him, so many masks. There was that pitiful kid who had taken shelter in the Revello house such a long time ago; that messed up, bleached out shell, refugee of monstrous abuse and abandonment and so many bad, bad things. I didn't wish that person back in my life and certainly not in Andrew's, but I missed him all the same. He was the first Andrew that I met, and he had been easier and simpler and maybe safer.

When he kissed me, there was this finality to it. It felt like he was saying, without words, 'I'm never letting you out of this, not ever', and, oh god, part of me was okay with that. How had that happened? And when?

I pulled the sweater over my face, trying to breathe through wave after wave of panic. Giles wouldn't let anything happen to him, I reminded myself. Except that Giles had already let things happen to him. I thought of that remote person, packing and telling me everything was going to be all right and bile rose in the back of my throat.

I wanted to scream at Giles, don't push him too far. Don't remake him into someone I can't recognize. Oh, and if you get him killed? Don't think I won't fry up your balls and serve them on toast to a Topller demon and make you watch.

God, I needed some perspective! Giles certainly wasn't the enemy. He'd saved my life more than once, and, more importantly, my sister's. And all that Watcher-y emotional distance stuff? It kept them from freaking out in a crisis. It was absolutely necessary.

Which brought me back to the layers and masks. Andrew had shown me that whole, me-Tarzan-you-Jane, alpha-male thing. It was an offer, of sorts. If I wanted, he could do that, be that. Get comfy, Dawnie. Might as well, because you aren't going anywhere, you've been, like, assimilated.

Once, you could call an accident. Twice, might be a coincidence. But three times, that, as the saying went, made it true. So, four times? Probably past the point of no return. I had acted on one potentially bad idea. Andrew even told me it was a bad idea and I did it anyway. Like _he_ had never acted on any bad ideas, no way. I was really mad at him for maybe six minutes.

What had drawn me to him, what continued to captivate me was the happiness layer. More than most of the people in our world, he remembered how to be happy, how to play, in spite of the darkness and blood and all manner of stupid crap. Under all the newer layers of solemn and serious, he was innately kind and good and just... happy, and he shared it with me.

One thing I had noticed was that truly happy people? Very, very rare. Precious even. Oh god, what if he didn't come back this time?

By the third night, I was desperate to escape the clamor in my head, in my body too, for that matter. My sister was in Copenhagen. Faith came in with an older slayer named Jeananne and a couple of bottles of Cuervo. The kitchen table was commandeered for shot glasses and the slicing of limes.

We started at the table. I ended up more under it. Connor wandered in, scattered kosher salt crunching under his sneakers. He was such an _American_, except not, because he was a fake. We were all fakes. I rolled onto my back and squinted up at him.

I tried to explain how we were all holograms, that the physicists had proved it. He wasn't impressed. I continued, telling him how we were all nothing but a pack of trading cards, forever branded with our indelible designations: Destroyer, Dark Slayer, Key (always that, always). Our Summoner card was possibly lost under the couch cushions, or, worse, had been exchanged for some teenaged girl card. The gods played spoons and poker and go fish with us all the time, didn't they?

I was laughing and laughing. I watched his upper lip curl in disgust and it made me laugh even harder. Connor didn't approve of alcohol consumption, much less the drunk and disorderly, and I was way past drunk and disorderly.

I reminded him repeatedly that this was Europe, damn it. Nobody cared about contributing to the delinquency of minors here. They didn't have all the Puritanical hang-ups that Americans did. At that point, I might have been slurring too much to be intelligible. The memory is fuzzy at best.

Connor glared at Faith and pointed down at me. "What's up with this?"

Faith snickered, but when she replied, she sounded tired. "Three guesses, first two don't count. Have one with us?" She indicated the bottle that I supposed was still on the table.

"No. How long has he been -"

"A few days, I think. I just got here. I didn't ask."

Connor sighed loudly. "Help me get her to bed."

"She's fine down there, Junior. She's not hurtin' nothin'."

"And you want to be within a thousand-mile radius if Buffy comes back tomorrow and finds her like this, because..."

"Mmm, good point." She staggered up, knocking over her chair. It was the funniest thing ever. "Jeananne," Faith groaned, "You crashing here or what?"

"I can't move, chica."

"Fair enough. Shit! Ow!"

"What's wrong?" Connor was squatting on the floor, lifting me into his arms.

"Rubbed eye. Lime juice. Pain. Ow."

Jeananne giggled. The ceiling was rushing towards me too fast. My knees caught the edge of the table with a loud thump, sending glass falling and shattering everywhere. It was the new funniest thing ever, even Faith and Jeananne thought so.

"Oh, you know that's gonna hurt later!"

"No kidding!"

"Could you people just help me already? She's going to wake up the whole house," Connor huffed in exasperation. "And what the hell is she _wearing_?"

"Beats the fuck outta me. Figured it was his. Really kinda sweet, don'tcha think?"

"Geez, just shut up and grab her feet, she keeps kicking."

God it must suck to be the responsible one.

"Sometimes, yeah," said Connor as he carried me up the stairs.

Had I said that out loud?


	13. Chapter 13

I surfaced slowly. It hurt. I guess it was supposed to hurt. My mouth felt like it was stuffed with saw dust. My throat was raw, my headed pounded, and my knees... I might never walk again. I needed several aspirin, a shower, and a ream or two of Crane's, for all of the sincere, heartfelt letters of apology I probably owed to the people in my life, who put up with my crap. Oh, and maybe a good stomach pump.

At least the hurt brought some much-needed clarity. I couldn't just wait around for things to get worse. I was pretty sure I had a problem and admission of the problem was the first step to solving it. So, a problem? Hmmm, that would be a resounding yes, as illustrated by the previously observed inability to walk, among other things.

Second, was the problem mystical in nature, or medical? Could I blame stress-induced hysteria, early-onset Alzheimer's, or multi-spectrum schizophrenia? How about plain old PMS?

I submitted to biannual psych evals and physicals, as all of our staff did. Our two biggest, non-emergency related health challenges as an organization were STDs and PTSD. My sister ran a tight ship, so to speak. She didn't take chances on anything when it came to personnel.

My last check ups had been fine, so if there was a problem, and I had in fact decided that there was, it was likely mystical in nature. My recent atypical thoughts and behavior, they could be attributable to magic, distinct lack of sunburn-y feelings non-withstanding.

When I could finally abide being vertical again, I ran through the standard trance to see spells, but I couldn't find anything. There was no indication that anyone had enchanted me with lust or general psychotic-ness, which, you know, was nice.

The next phase of inquiry included demonic involvement. Andrew had said it first, because sometimes he still said absolutely the wrong thing at the wrong time, and, perversely, I was glad about that. I knew very little about succubi, and, shockingly, there wasn't a single website titled, 'You Might Be a Succubus If...', or, 'So You're a Succubus - Now What?' Plus, apparently, you had to be born that way. For once, I was grateful that I hadn't technically ever been born at all.

The next variable for analysis: demonic possession. I had experienced possession before and didn't remember much about what had happened, except the sore throat afterwards. They told me later that I had breathed fire, and I believed them, because nobody let me have tequila back then.

I wasn't looking for the kinds of beasts featured at "Demons!Demons!Demons!", but the more spiritual, William Peter Blatty kind. There were actually two main forms of demonic spiritual interference, oppression and possession.

Oppression happened when a person did something that invited the harassment, according to one source. The demon attacked from the outside. Possession occurred when one or more demons inhabited a person's body.

The symptoms of oppression and possession were similar: abnormal, irrational fear, lack of self-control, outbursts of rage, violent behavior, maniacal delight in wielding power, precognition, retro-cognition, excessive sexual immorality and appetites, and, oh good, fallacious reasoning.

Causes included: substance abuse, preoccupation with the occult, extended long-term exposure to malevolent forces, and - hey - my new best friend, excessive sexual immorality and appetites. Why did that one have to be listed as both a cause and a symptom? That hardly seemed fair, but it appeared we might have a winner.

I had experienced most of those things recently, and while they might all be psychosomatic, it was time to test the primary hypotheses. It was time to pee in the proverbial cup, or, more accurately, spit in it.

I'm sure I've been more embarrassed in public than the afternoon I spent in that magic shop in the Via Veneto, but I didn't know when. Cheerleading tryouts didn't even score a close second. I wanted to disappear into the floor as the proprietor read over my supply list and his assistant retrieved the items on it. Worse, the other customers seemed to know what those jars of powers and bags of herbs meant in that combination too.

That counter top and its contents might as well have been a giant scarlet letter, emblazoned on my forehead. Everyone began to step away, giving me wide berth. I could almost hear them thinking; filthy, contaminated foreigner, probably fornicates with unclean things. Pathetic. Probably can't stop herself. Addict. Whore.

I didn't go home with my paraphernalia. I didn't want to risk anybody at the house seeing it. If I tested positive, I would have to tell, and go through the exorcism process, which, I read could last months and be really uncomfortable. But I had to know first.

I turned the key and let myself into the apartment near the Piazza Navona. It was much smaller than the first one in the city that Buffy and I had shared, just one bedroom and a living area really. Sometimes she was out late on business, or I was, with school or research, and we were just too tired at the end of the night or whatever to drag ourselves all the way home.

There was nothing personal or particularly ours in that space, it might have been a hotel room. It was the anonymity of the place that I needed most of all. The kitchenette consisted of a miniature refrigerator, a bar-style sink, and a single electric burner. It was all I that required.

I mixed the ingredients carefully, watching the pan so that it didn't boil over.

Outside, the city boiled over. Rome was sweltering in the hottest summer on record since like, 1904. We were on our thirty-fourth day of highs above the 100 mark, or almost 38 degrees Celsius. You might even say Rome was, you know, burning; but I trembled with cold sweats.

By the time I had repeatedly practiced the incantation until I knew it backwards and forwards, the brew was ready. I twisted the burner knob to the 'off' position, spoke the words in the correct order, and spat into the milky-gray soup.

The egg timer was set for twenty minutes. The mess in the pan would turn dark blue, or it wouldn't. Blue, really? Who had come up with this stupid spell, anyway? Could my entire existence BE any...wait. Nobody answer that.

The mess in the pan didn't change color. I was neither oppressed, nor possessed, but I performed the spell five more times, just to make sure. When I left the apartment, I triple-cleaned every surface. Everything that couldn't be flushed away went into a bag, and the bag went into a dumpster across town, so that nobody could connect it to an apartment registered in my sister's name.

I returned home, vastly relieved, but fearing the last two possibilities even more than the first two. It would be far more difficult to gather measurable, empirical data on these, never mind painful, and not just to me.

One of these possibilities was something called generalized demonic infection, or GDI. Little was known about it. There was almost no research available at all, and it was characterized by a lack of consistency in symptoms. It was difficult to diagnose and showed tendencies to resist treatment of any kind. No specific causes had ever been indentified, other than bad luck.

A person could just randomly manifest it. Nobody had ever figured out why, it just happened sometimes, like certain kinds of autoimmune disorders. Infected people didn't always get sick right away. Occasionally, they even appeared to gain enhanced powers or abilities, beyond typical human experience. The end result was always the same though, the shutting down, the wasting, and then the dying.

The thing was, generalized demonic infection was actually far preferable to my other possibility. Every time I thought about that final option, part of me died a little, and not in a pretty, Camille kind of way. A person could manifest demonic aspects sometimes, if another person, someone close to them, called forth the aspect; if that person close to them, say, summoned the aspect.

I thought of the magic shop owner, how he looked at me with such pity and disgust, how the only thing he'd said was something about how the world could be quite a dangerous place. I had nodded, humble and humiliated, but the world? The world might not be nearly as dangerous as the person who made my breakfast most mornings and ensured that the cable bill was paid on time each month.

It was so ugly, that last possibility, a slithering thing in the dark ditch of my mind. I'd known fear my whole life, of one kind or another. Me and fear, we were practically on Christmas card terms. Fear was always lurking around the corner, under the bed, waiting; except when it walked right up and gave me a big sloppy kiss.

It wasn't possible, it couldn't be, but there it was, traitorous and ripping through me like a buzz saw, a vicious little voice, a serpent in the tree. What if Andrew had summoned something?

_(Oh that's rich, blame the victim! You coward!)_

_(He's different now.)_

_(Because belief and proof, Dawn, same thing, right?)_

_(So hard to prove a negative!)_

_(Oh yeah, you know, because you do a lot of ex-evil? Or maybe not-so-ex? Isn't that supposed to Buffy's gig? Don't you know better?)_

_(I'm not! I don't- I mean I do! And he wouldn't do that to me. He wouldn't even think it!)_

_(You know all about the criminal mind then?)_

_(Criminal? So you've already convicted him? No! Just...no.)_

_(You knew what he was, you've always known, and you thought you could go and what - be his friend? Do the things you've been doing without consequences? Even he warned you about consequences.)_

_(Stop!)_

I pushed it all down. Not yet, not yet. Terminal illness was still an option on the table. Either way though, we were going to have to talk about it. I was going to have to ask questions I couldn't even stand to think about. Unforgivable questions.

Andrew had sounded so scared and ashamed when he told me I wouldn't want to live in his head. Fair enough. But I'd be willing to bet serious coin mine wouldn't be any picnic either. Maybe the worst part was, even after I let that tiny treacherous voice of doubt start up, I was desperate to be with him again.

I ached for the warmth of this mouth on my body. There was that need, sex and something more; that need to push him down beneath me, to lose myself in him, feel him surrender. I wanted to see that odd smile, right before he gave in to me.

I was going to have to knock it all down, be the mean kid on the beach, kicking over sandcastles. I was going to have to hurt us both, and I had promised that I never would. I almost escaped, I almost took off for Willow's office in Glastonbury, or the Cleveland base, where my sister was supposed to be that week.

I got as far as tossing some clothes in a bag and checking the flight schedules. But I couldn't hit the purchase button for the ticket, I couldn't make myself leave. I really was a coward.

Five days later, I came home late and found Andrew on my bed, deep in sleep. He hadn't bothered to get under the covers and the lamp on the table was still on. It looked like he should have probably been in a hospital bed.

Someone, or something, had beaten him badly. His clothing was torn and dirty, like he'd been rolling around in an open grave. Dried blood was caked on the side of his head, and most every inch of flesh that I could see was covered in black and purple bruises.

But he was alive. He was alive and all of my resolve about backing away and putting on the brakes evaporated. Again.

I opened the armoire as quietly as possible, intending to grab a blanket to cover him and get out so that he could recover in peace. I could still make the last flight into Heathrow if I hurried, take a vacation to non-coping land, or a nice cruise down de-Nile. I must have been too loud though, because as soon as I began to shake out the blanket, he caught my wrist, encircling it with trembling fingers.

"Missed you, pretty girl."

"Me you too," I whispered.

He pulled me on top of him and I knew what he wanted because I did too. He flinched in pain wherever I kissed him, but he followed my mouth with his every time I tried to pull away and wouldn't let me stop.


	14. Chapter 14

I played a prank on Andrew once, the previous year. The day before his birthday, he was planning some really pedantic lecture regarding fire safety, apropos of the four lovely, mint-condition M9A1-7 flamethrowers donated by some shadowy para-military group out of Manitoba, facilitated by Harris, Inc.

We all knew it was coming and nobody was in the mood. We were exuberant. Buoyant. We'd had a long string of overwhelming wins that month. We were, on fire, so to speak. Five minutes before the presentation began, complete with POWERPOINT and laser pens mind you, I borrowed a teal blue eyeliner pencil from Teresa and gathered her and three other girls.

"How is he even going to see it?" Asked Laura.

"You're going to have to sit close and do it slowly," I told her.

Sophie kept squinting and smearing the lines. "And he's going to think this is funny?"

"Yeah. I'm mean, I hope so."

Gioia was unimpressed. "I have not seen this movie. It is something from a movie, yes?"

"Yes," I said.

"And he will get it?"

"Just remember to blink slowly. You may have to do it more than once."

He started in with the historical component. There were illustrative slides. There were charts and graphs. I think there might have been some interpretive dance on the way, but I gave the signal and the blinking ensued. They even managed to stay deadpan. I didn't.

(Blink) Happy.

(Blink) Birthday.

(Blink) Mister.

(Blink) Wells.

It took him maybe forty-five seconds. I'd never seen him laugh that way before, nor have I since. He turned bright pink and then downright purple. It was the kind of laughing that looks more like a seizure.

One of the girls ran to get him a glass of water. He doubled over, silent, shoulders heaving. Every time he tried to look up, he lost it again, and so did we. Later, he approached me out on the terrace, shaking his head.

"Oh Dawnie. Oh chica, you know this means war - right?"

I'm afraid I wasn't repentant in the least. "Hey, I'd apologize, but I don't think I can get through it with a straight face."

"Just wait. Dish best served cold and, um, so forth." He hugged me then, awkwardly, because I guess he wasn't used to hugging people, and too tightly and it lasted maybe a little too long.

Part of me wished I could rewind to that moment and start over. Be a little more mature this time. Show a little more self-control. And part of me thought a do-over would end up a waste of expensive magic. I wanted to be here with him too much, as truly bad as things were.

I set the teacup and saucer down on the nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed.

"Milk in first?" He asked.

"Yeah. I forgot again. Sorry." I tried to fight my reflexive eye roll and failed.

"Heathen." He grinned up at me sleepily. It set off that familiar flutter in my stomach.

"Anglophile," I shot back at him.

"Lush." He took the cup, hiding behind it.

So he'd heard about that. Already. Great. Enjoy your privacy? Avoid living with a bunch of girls! I flushed in mortification.

"Mmmm, well, behold the bad behavior and general foolishness that is me."

He replaced the cup in its saucer and tugged at my shirt. I bent and kissed him. I felt his hands in my hair and his knuckles brushing over the back of my neck sent tingles down my spine.

"Still licensed to kill," he murmured.

It was such an odd thing for him to remember, and it reminded me too much of the other parts of that story that I didn't like to think about.

I answered him in Natasha-speak quickly, pushing past it. "Only zee leetle death dahlink."

I ran my fingertips lightly down the line of his jaw, across his swollen bottom lip and over the cuts and bruises decorating his skin. I had definite plans to haul him into the shower. Then, later, there would probably be gauze and antiseptic and antibiotic ointment involved, followed by large amounts of rest. The kind that, regrettably, didn't include any little deaths at all.

I pulled back, trying to ignore the effects of his hands on me. "You need... um... attention."

"Yes."

Mouth. There. Warm. Colors swirled beneath my eyelids.

"Not like _that_!"

He groaned. "Okay, you're right. I have a good, oh... easily eighteen hours worth of catch up here."

"Hey! I cleaned!"

"You? You cleaned _at_. There's a difference." He twirled a strand of my hair around his index finger.

"And we, you know, gotta do that talking thing. For real this time."

"Isn't that what we're doing now?"

"Well, probably better with clothing."

"Oh. That kind of talking." He dropped his gaze and pressed his lips together apprehensively.

"Yeah. Stuff happened while you were gone. Stuff you need to hear. I need to just download I guess. Then I need your opinion, in, well, a professional capacity."

"Oh." He said.

"Yeah."

"So, um, on that note..." He sat up and stretched. It looked like it hurt. I tossed him his t-shirt from the foot of the bed.

"Dawn," he said, all at once serious as he slipped it over his head, "You need to hear this too. Your interp on the Tyuun prophesy was spot on. The alternate A and B sections, all really, really helpful."

"You aren't supposed to tell me about it," I reminded him.

"True, but you deserve to know. You should just be aware, what you're doing here, it's important. Valuable. It saves lives."

Lives. His life.

There was this one hair on my knee that the razor always missed. It captured my attention, sharp against my fingers. I would pull it out by the root. Anything not to have to look back at him.

My sister had absolved Andrew of everything he might have or have not been involved in before the collapse of the Hellmouth, however it is that one individual can personally forgive and absolve another individual of such things. But the way he threw himself into the work here, I didn't think he had. Not that we ever talked about it.

If I thought about it, if I let myself look at it, every day was, I suspected, a mindful act of supplication for him. Every day was like this admission of okay, I screwed up, do what you will with me, God, Buffy, whoever. I admired it, the sheer noble audacious, '...far-far-better-thing...' bullshit of it all.

But I hated it too. I hated it because I was selfish and it didn't seem like a lifetime graveyard shift of grandly, gallantly, making amends left much room for anything else. Anyone else. Especially not me. And it seemed such a high price to pay for a little Marvel-esque glamour. Identity shift was highly overrated, I could tell you firsthand.

"You're closer to permanent assignment," I said. It wasn't a question. I had known it was coming. It never felt like a threat before.

"Maybe," he said.

"Will training end soon?"

He shook his head. "I don't know."

"And you couldn't tell me even if you did."

"Right." He toyed with the hem of his shirt, head bowed.

"So one day I'm going to wake up and you're just going to be gone, aren't you?"

He didn't answer for a long time. We sat facing each other, breathing. Uncertainty radiated off of him.

"Dawn, I need to tell you something. I should have said it a long time ago, but it's strange, every time I think of it, I kind of forget about it again. It's like when you wake up from a dream, you can kind of remember it and kind of...not? The more I try and focus on the details, the more it all slips away."

"And?"

Andrew ran his hands through his hair in frustration. "It's evaporated again. It was, like, _right here_ and now it's gone. "

I did it without thinking. I reached out and caught his hand in mine. He looked up, and concern entwined with desire rolled over me. I leaned in, ready to forget everything again with him.

"Pretty girl..." He sounded more tired than aroused.

Something crackled in my head like dry leaves on a campfire. Something...yeah, Andrew was right, something was just...My heart pounded. I was right on top of it, if I could just see past. And then I could.

"What does it mean, 'pretty girl'?" I demanded, releasing his hand. "It means something to you - it's _not_ just a term of affection."

Andrew ducked his head. "Um, I guess it's the first thing I remember about you. I used to ride my bike past your house when I was a kid. I think I saw you and Buffy helping your mom carry boxes once. Maybe it was when you first moved in?"

"Wait," I said. "So, it was like 1997? You have a memory of me from 1997?"

"Possibly. I...I've never thought about it."

"That's three years before I actually, like, _existed_."

He paled. "Oh, right. I knew that."

"So, why?" Blood raced in my veins. Finally, evidence of...well, I had no idea of what.

"Huh?" Andrew had that deer in the headlights look.

"Why would the monks give you such a specific memory of me that early? There's only like three other people left on the whole planet besides my dad and my sister that have any memories of me that early! What does that mean?"

He shrugged. "Maybe it doesn't mean anything. Maybe-"

"Oh my god, are you being obtuse on purpose? Think! Why would you need such a specific memory? What purpose would it serve? You and I had no contact at all until the night Willow-" I trailed off helplessly.

And there it was. Killing. Death. All that stuff from the past that was so much easier to just not think about. Except that now I had to.

I was going to have to couch it in non-accusatory language. There would be lots of I-statements. We conducted workshops on conflict and dispute resolution all the time. It was one of Mabel's best things. I should have been a pro at it.

You were supposed to make a distinction between the problem and the person. You formulated the conflict issues as shared problems that you had to solve cooperatively. You were to state clearly what you felt and wanted and invite your counterpart to help in finding solutions.

You expressed your own emotions and frustrated needs in clear and concrete words. You asked for your counterpart's fears and needs in a way that conveyed that you cared about them. You avoided triggering the defensiveness of your counterpart by not blaming, accusing, criticizing and diagnosing. You took responsibility for your own contributions to the conflict.

That guy, Murphy? Total optimist. Two words: Epic. Fail.

What came out of my mouth was, "Can I trust you? I mean, really trust you? Because it seems like a person ought to know - "

"Dawn-" He choked.

"And right now I don't know." I finished.

All of the air had gone out of the room. I heard him swallow.

"So, Andrew, is there any chance that you... summoned something?" I said it so fast that I almost tripped over the words. "I mean, even as a mistake, an accident - like a wish spoken aloud?"

If I hadn't been sitting down already my knees would have buckled under me. I watched the shock and then hurt flood over him. It was even worse than I had imagined.

"You think I could?"

"Did you?"

"If you believe that about me, then why would you think that I would tell you the truth about it?"

There was that neutral tone, that blank expression. I wanted to take it all back, unsay everything. I plunged forward, kamikaze anyway.

"I don't, not really. Believe it, I mean. It's just... I eliminated every other possibility I could think of. I ran the Keizel-Wilson test. Six times, Andrew! It came back negative! I did everything I could think of. Your involvement was just the simplest explanation, that's all. Please don't think of it as an accusation. It's not-"

I watched his hands open and close on top of the blanket over and over like he didn't know what to do with them.

He chuckled mirthlessly. "Occam's Razor? Really? You know it doesn't actually work very well, right? How often is it the case that all things are equal? Never mind the semantic content! Oh, and also? You have to be working from, like, an incontrovertible assumption. What you've got is derived from experience and because senses are imperfect there is no rational way of verifying-"

"I'm sorry," I whispered. My pulse roared in my ears.

He shook his head. "No. No, you did the right thing. I don't... I don't expect you to just conveniently forget. I know I don't get to take those things back. But, no. No, And did I mention, _no_? Can I say no enough times?"

I think I wanted to soothe the hurt I had caused more than I wanted to breathe.

"You have told me thrice, and what-"

"And what I tell you three times is true." He finished.

"Okay," I said. "I get that my inquiry method was shamefully sloppy. I was _scared_, Andrew! Make that present tense! Am scared. I told you before and you didn't, I don't know, _hear_ me. What should I do?"

"I'm not sure."

"What if I have generalized demonic infection? It's fatal! Did you know it's fatal?"

"There's nothing wrong with you, Dawn."

"How do you know? Can you prove it?"

"No! I mean, yes, there are other tests. Just give me some time. We can figure this out. I wish you'd let me help you to begin with."

"You weren't here, what was I supposed to do? Why do you have such an early memory of me? Why the other memory lapses?"

His eyes closed. "There's nothing wrong," he repeated.

"Then prove it," I said. "Tell me whatever it is you keep forgetting. Relay this one thing that is so important, yet always slips your mind. You do that, and we're cool."

His mouth opened and closed about five times. There was a spark of determination, then frustration in those blue eyes, and finally fear underneath it. He shrugged and kissed me instead. I pulled away.

It was a bad idea. He could get hurt. If I really had some kind of demonic infection, then I could pass it to him. I wanted to scream at him, _wake up_! We don't get to ignore this, pretend it isn't happening because it's what we want, or it's more convenient or it feels better!

You face god-knows-what in the field and then you come home and hide in this, whatever it is, head in the sand. Hand down the mouth of the monster? Oh Andrew, don't you get it? I _am_ the monster. That stone knife with the blue jewel is probably the only way you get out of this alive.

I shouldn't even be here, I thought. If I was infected then I was putting him in danger. He wouldn't be safe anywhere near me. I had to leave.

I wanted to believe in him. I wanted it, but I couldn't wait for him. I couldn't risk him.

"Dawn-"

"This isn't going to work," I said.

I wrenched myself from him abruptly and lurched for the door. I couldn't run fast enough, or far enough. I texted my sister that I would be staying in the city for a few days so that I could concentrate on a research project. It was mostly the truth.


	15. Chapter 15

It took Andrew all of four and a half hours to find me at the apartment off the Piazza Navona. Actually, he probably figured out where I was more quickly than that, but only after he sat, waiting for me to come back for a while. Because it never occurred to him that I would, like, _leave_ leave. By then I had trashed the place.

It started with the lamp. It was an ugly one, beige with gold trim, forgettable, like the rest of the furnishings. No one would miss it. It was an accident anyway, how it tipped off the foyer table when I dropped my bag there and slammed the door. It wasn't like I did it on purpose, at least not at first. It was such a startling sound, that smash and crack against the tile of the floor.

I stood surrounded by those lamp shards and thought they could be me, those fragments. Bitterness swept over my heart and behind it rage. I burned with rage toward Andrew, myself, and the world in general. It wasn't like I planned it, that first step, but the crunch under my heel sounded so sweet. It was so good, so satisfying that I stepped again.

_Crunch. _

The little voice in me that was still rational begged me to halt. Stop here. Stop and clean up while the mess was still small and manageable. Stop and go home, to make peace and get help from some responsible adult and salvage whatever might be salvageable.

_Crunch._

The sound wasn't soothing, it was stimulating. It fed the rage, and the rage wished the sound was bones crunching under my feet. I thought of Andrew, of begging him to give me some kind of response, some kind of answer, and how he had kissed me instead, as if distracting me would make it all disappear. And me, I let him.

It was exactly what I wanted. He only did what I wanted. However he was now, out in the world with other people, he seemed helpless when it came to me and just then I kind of hated him for it. I gave the table where the lamp had been an experimental shove and it skidded loudly on the tile. I shoved again and over it went.

I turned the table with my foot and saw that the corner where it hit the floor had splintered. The framed print on the wall of the Temple of Venus Genetrix went next. Venus Genetrix was the Roman goddess of domesticity. Perfect. The breaking glass rang in my ears like bells.

Fury ravished me, a frenzied lover, too fast and too rough, but I didn't care. I tore the curtains covering the room's one window. They were beige velveteen, drab until they were speckled with my blood. The glass of the window behind the curtain had flirted so shamelessly with my fists, it wasn't like I could have resisted it.

I toppled everything that I couldn't demolish in that room. I kicked a dozen holes in the beige walls. I kicked until my legs were covered in plaster powder. I ripped at the pink and beige Persian rug until I had no fingernails left. I started to snap off the hands of the beige and brown clock that lay beside me on the rug, but I was drained.

The rage retreated in the warmth of the afternoon light, stealing my strength away with it. My demonic aspect, or infection, or whatever it was retreated and I lay there in wonder, horror seeping through the edges of it. This was Sunnydale-worthy destruction, but I was the only one here. I was-

"Dawn!" Andrew was calling from the hallway. Of course he found me here. It wasn't like I was hiding anyway. Our situation had simply become untenable and I had removed myself from it. I had removed myself because he couldn't help me. I had removed myself from him because I was a danger to him. Obviously.

"Dawn!" He was knocking.

I wasn't like I could let him in.

"Dawn, it's me."

Yeah, I got that, Captain Obvious, I thought silently.

"Dawn, I know you're in there, I saw you through the window."

I sat up amid the ruins of the apartment interior. I couldn't trust myself with him anymore. I couldn't let him anywhere near me.

"Go away!" I cried.

"No."

"It stops here, Andrew, I'm sorry. I can't risk that whatever is happening to me might injure you. This never should have happened. I'm sorry, it was my fault. It's over."

"Fine." I heard his breath catch and my lungs constricted in sympathy. "But I'm not leaving you here. Just let me in, okay?"

I remembered shelling peas and drinking wine in Maria Bianchetti's kitchen earlier that summer, chatting idly about life and, her favorite topic, men. Maria had laughed in her deep, earthy way and said to me, "Piccola, you don't know what trouble is, until you get one that just won't leave you."

Except that she said it in Italian and it sounded a lot more romantic. I had wished that my sister was there. I would have liked to hear what she thought about that statement. I suspected that Maria ought to know though, Arturo was like husband number four.

"Dawn, can we talk about this? Please?"

Talking? Us? Yeah, that would work. For about five seconds. I pulled myself with my hands along the floor until I was sitting against the door. I wanted to open it more than anything. I wanted to fall into his arms. I wanted his mouth on my skin.

"I can't." I said.

"Dawn," He pleaded. There was something raw and uncontrolled in it, something naked.

Maybe he could make it better. Maybe he could stop this pain, or I could at least stop his. I fought the urge to unlock the door. Just to unlock it. I wasn't like I had to open it or anything. It wasn't like I was really going to let him in here with me. My hand went to the knob. The metal was cold to the touch and shocking.

"I thought I was just like you, Tin Man and all that," I said through the door. "I thought it was going to be okay, but it's not. There's this thing in me, this... darkness. I'm so sorry. I'm just so very, very sorry! I don't know what else to do, I can't let it hurt you. At least not more than it already has."

"Open the door. I'm going to help you, I promise. I found a solution, well, sort of, but it requires your participation. And your consent."

Consent. Now there was a word neither of us used much. I remembered the tender flesh of his neck under my teeth. I remembered his head between my legs.

"Dawnie?" I could almost feel his warmth, as if the door wasn't between us.

"You're not my Watcher, you aren't responsible for me!" I told him desperately.

From the other side of the door he said, "I love you."

The declaration left me sickened. He had either lied to me or he was infected too. It had swallowed his mind in one greedy gulp. Either way, it amounted to our own cozy private apocalypse for two. I slumped until I lay huddled on my side.

"You said you couldn't love anyone, that you weren't even wired that way. What changed?"

"I know what I said before, it was stupid. Please don't do this, Dawn."

"Why?"

"Why, what?"

"Why do you love me?"

There was a long silence. I knew he hadn't gone, I could still hear him breathing outside. I wondered if he didn't know the answer to the question, or if he didn't want to tell me.

Finally he said, "Because of the Double Meat Palace wet naps...and that god-awful pudding."

Oh. History again. I hadn't thought about that. I never thought about that. It was yet another one of those things that we never ever talked about. Love? Maybe more like Stockholm Syndrome.

The day Willow had dragged Andrew back into our lives after catching him buying pig blood, I'd wanted to be tough about it like Anya. I had wanted to beat the truth out of him, watch him twitch. But something else moved me.

In truth, I didn't like what we were doing. It wasn't that I felt bad for Andrew, because, back then, I didn't. It was that I didn't like who we were, doing that.

We had become the kind of people who tied other people to chairs and left them like that. Not demons, not monsters, people. It was like, for a while, we forgot the difference.

When no one was looking, I had taken a bunch of moist towelette packets from the drawer in the kitchen where we kept leftover ketchup and soy sauce. I had knelt on the floor beside him in the dark.

"Please untie me," he said.

"I can't," I told him.

"I wouldn't hurt you, _not you_."

"I know," I said. And I did. In spite of the evidence to the contrary, I knew it the same way I knew that the sun usually rose in the east.

The night he had pointed a sword under Xander's chin on the street in front of the Magic Box, I had moved toward him, ready to take it from him if I had to. We weren't friends then. We didn't even know each other.

He would have thought of me as an enemy, but even then, I instinctively trusted that he wouldn't hurt me. Even scared and armed with pointy objects, I had no real fear of him. He wasn't capable of hurting me, not really, he just wasn't.

I began tearing open the packets one by one. I think he was afraid I would choke him to death with them. Instead, I began cleaning every bit of exposed skin that I could reach. He started to say something and shook my head. Don't. Just don't.

He spoke anyway, squirming under the ropes. "Why are you doing this?"

That was the question, wasn't it, why indeed?

"Um...you smell bad, like, rotting corpse bad."

"Oh."

He watched me sweep the towelette between his fingers, under his fingernails, unresisting. The sides of his thumbs were raw where he had nervously scraped away the skin with his index fingernails.

I cleaned over the knuckles of his hands, up his forearms. There were thick, old scars on the insides of his wrists. I had some scars like that myself, raised and white.

I wiped his forehead, into the hairline, back down the nose, over the light stubble on the upper lip, behind the ears. It was like I could decontaminate the evil from him, wipe it away. He was very, very still, barely breathing. The air stung with bright alcohol and lemon scent.

"I've been a prisoner before," I said. It was the only explanation that I had.

Later, I brought him the last pudding cup I could find in the fridge. It was almost morning.

"I don't really like tapioca," He had stammered.

"It's all we have."

"Okay. Um...are you going to untie-"

"I can't, I told you already."

"Then how?"

"I can feed you. I'm good at it, I won't make a mess, I promise. I...I fed Tara when she was sick."

Tara, god, Tara. My heart clenched. What was I doing?

He swallowed.

"It's poisoned, isn't it?" He nodded at the plastic cup.

"What? No! See?" I peeled back the foil lid. "Tamper proof".

What was I doing? I was doing what Tara would do. Helping. As best I could.

He shook his head. "You could have just put the poison in and glued it back down."

"Stop it! Just stop!" My words came out in a frustrated hiss. "I'm not a nail and you're not a hammer, and...um...vice versa."

"What does that mean?" He sniffed.

"Forget it. Here."

I licked the edge of the cup to prove that it wasn't poison and then I slowly offered him a small spoonful of the pudding. He took it, watching me out of the corner of his eye like a feral thing.

"Wouldn't you help me?" I asked, trying to reassure him. If your trio had captured me and tied me to a chair in your basement? Even if you weren't allowed to let me go, wouldn't you at least have tried to make it less...awful?"

He had closed his eyes then, refusing to look at me at all. I finally gave up trying to feed him, went back to bed, and tried not to think about our hostage downstairs. We had become the kind of people who took hostages and there was nothing I could do about it. I was more afraid of us that night than the First.

Even after Andrew became my friend, even after I had slept beside him, laughed with him, worked with him, we had never talked about that night. I wouldn't have known what to say about it.

I heard him slide down the door and land with a soft thump. I could imagine him, leaning against it in the hallway, peeling the skin from the edges of his thumbs.

"Do you remember what you asked me, Dawn?"

He was apparently reading my mind again.

"I mean, I hate talking about that stuff. It happened and it was horrible and I can't do anything about it and it never completely stops hurting."

His voice was so soft, I could barely hear him through the door.

"I wouldn't have had to worry about whether or not to help you. Jonathan would have done it. He would have helped you. I would have just kept out of the way and tried not to see what was happening. That's who I was. I'm sorry. It's the truth; I can't change it. I wish I could. It was you and your sister... you let me be somebody else. You have to be able to separate truth from illusion. Giles tells me that all the time. It's why I won't leave. You're the only truth I have."

I hadn't known it would hurt. There's no way I could have guessed it would hurt that much. Somebody should have warned me. I mean, this kind of thing is supposed to make you happy - right? People telling you they love you?

"And how long have you had that monologue plotted out?" I snapped.

He sighed. "A couple of years now, I guess."

The broken window beckoned. It was only two stories to climb down the fire escape. Everything had changed and I couldn't accept it, not yet.

_Crunch._

I had been pressing a piece of lamp into the floor with my palm and hadn't even noticed. It wasn't bones. Why did hope hurt even more than despair? Nobody had warned me about that either.

"I am not the hill you get to die on Andrew Wells," I said. Then I ran to the window and leapt out. Because I wasn't ready yet.


	16. Chapter 16

After a couple of days in a lumpy youth hostel bunk and too many faux-cheerful texts to my sister about how great the research was going and how much I had missed the daily bustle of the city, after hours of walking beside the Tiber River until hardened calluses became blisters again, after countless espressos and negotiations with our cleaning service about the wrecked apartment, after Buffy wrestled my confession from me in the cafe with the red tablecloths, I was ready.

I had run from the apartment, but I was just buying time. I had told him it was over, I even said it to my sister, but it wasn't the truth. It was like somebody flipped a switch or something. He loved me, and it changed everything. I could be brave; I could stop running away. Hand down the mouth of the monster.

Strange forces were certainly afoot in our world, but my demonic infection theory seemed laughable now. The mystery of my slide out of sanity, Andrew had named that one. All the fear and lust, the searing rages, the protectiveness even in the face of well-meaning family, these lined up like good little soldiers when viewed through the lens of love.

It wasn't a pleasant thing to contemplate, but it made sense. I had witnessed all kinds of ugliness affixed with that particular label, applied by my sister and those who gathered around her. I'd heard stories that would make both the Boogey Man _and_ the Marquis de Sade blush like schoolgirls, but I was resolute. I was tired of being bullied by the specter of love, and somewhere inside I knew better. I knew it didn't have to be like this.

Buffy was right. It _was_ my mess and nobody could clean it up but me. I followed the cobblestone road off the piazza on foot, past ochre colored buildings, hanging laundry, tavernas where people still smoked, and balconies with their little pots of rosemary and lavender and geraniums burnt by the sun. I inhaled diesel fumes and bread baking somewhere and the acrid odor of stale beer as I passed the last alley.

Eventually the cobblestones turned to dirt as the road climbed a terraced hill out of town. Dust filled my lungs and I took a shortcut through the vineyards, climbing until the red tile rooftops of our village were far below.

At last I came to our house. Our house sat on its hill at the end of the road, its stone so old and sad. I thought at that moment it was the most desolate structure I had ever seen, weeping into the ground.

Our house with its herb garden and cellar that held sharper things than wine now, our house embraced by the coral climbing rose on its eastern corner, its walls that continued to crumble, no matter how often Xander arrived just in time to shore them up again.

Our house waited for me, with its people inside of it, my true family, who were mostly not my blood and were linked to me instead by mission and purpose and-yes, love, as messy and confusing and frightening as that could be. Would be.

Our first year in Italy, Andrew and I had watched yellow flames consume his apartment off the Piazza Rondanini. Sometimes loss happened not because of anything magic or evil. Sometimes it was just forgotten paint rags in the basement, a neighbor's careless cigarette ash, or an overloaded electrical outlet with too many twenty-first century necessities plugged in. There was no real way to prepare for every possible contingency, everyone else's senior moments and bad days.

"Loss sucks and is totally guaranteed," I had told him. "But you're still here, have you noticed that yet?"

I watched him swiftly compartmentalize it all. Then he smiled and bumped my shoulder with his. "Yeah, I am," he had said. "And so is your couch, right?"

Andrew had told me that he had a solution, a way to help. I would trust him through sheer force of will. It wasn't so unreasonable to believe in him. I would do it because I chose to do it.

The house was cool and dim inside and the stairs creaked under me as I climbed. I could hear him rustling above in my room. He had waited for me, keeping vigil until I was ready to come back and be here. He was still here, and now I was too.

Andrew sat cross-legged at the foot of my bed, laptop and books laid out before him like a solitaire spread. In the movies, I would have immediately fallen into his arms while grand and glorious music swelled and the sun set behind the Coliseum. As it really happened, I was frozen in the doorway, unable to move or say anything.

"You're back?" The question came even and controlled.

I had to swallow twice before I could answer. "Yeah."

"Okay. Good. Um, have a seat." He gestured to the one empty spot at the other end of the bed, where the pillows would normally be.

I sat. I should have expected this coldness, after the way I treated him. I was lucky that he was talking to me at all. What if I couldn't fix it?

I wanted to run. I wanted a taxi. I wanted a ticket back to the land of my childhood, however plastic and false it was. I wanted strip malls and McMansions and over-packaging and reality TV. I wanted not to be the kind of person who could cause the pain I saw in those dark hollowed eyes. I sat very still.

"So listen," he said. His mouth settled into a determined line. I nodded. He had my complete attention.

"My mother died when I was three. My Aunt Clara took care of us mainly, and we have her last name. I didn't meet my father until I was like, twelve. I mean, Rick, Tucker's dad was around sometimes, but...um...he didn't really...we didn't get along that well."

There were so many things that could have happened when I walked into that room. Andrew could have gotten up and left, he could have scolded me for being so stupid and stubborn, he could have insisted on acting like nothing had happened - none of those things would have surprised me. I never expected this.

"Why didn't you get along?" I asked.

"He didn't exactly...approve."

"Didn't approve of what?"

"Of me," Andrew said. "Especially after Tucker left. It was kind of bad, with just the two of them in that house. It was one of the reasons I ended up moving in with...um..."

I never knew I could move that fast. Some of those books were probably hundreds of years old, some of those books were probably irreplaceable, but I didn't care. The seconds it took to scramble over them to reach him seemed endless.

I didn't so much hug him as hurl myself against him and let him catch me. He returned my kisses gently until we had to break apart to catch our breath. He combed his hands through my hair, calming me.

"Dawn, I need to tell you this. You have to listen, okay?"

"Okay," I said into his chest.

"So, oh yeah, I had never met this guy, right? Never even saw a picture. I'd always heard he wasn't, well, he wasn't...what you'd want a dad to be. I never thought much about him, you know?"

I considered my own father and felt nothing but contempt. Hank Summers, the one who abandoned us. The one who left Mom when she needed him the most. For better or worse? Sure, whatever. I was thankful that the monks hadn't made me too sentimental about him. He didn't deserve it.

"I know what you mean," I said.

"It was at the Sea Garden. Do you remember it? Off Pacific Avenue?"

"I remember."

The Sea Garden Arcade had been beyond seedy and stank of old pot smoke and sewer. It was the kind of place kids went specifically because they were forbidden to. The walls were dark blue, almost black, and someone had once attempted to decorate in a half-hearted under-the-sea theme.

There were broken shells glued to the bar and to the bathroom mirror. The ceiling featured lurid murals of huge breasted mermaids with dark nipples. It was one of those places that had been there forever, interminable as the pyramids. Well, forever by California standards anyway, since the 1950's at least. It was so strange to think of it gone now, crushed into the earth.

"And by met?" Andrew continued, "I don't mean that he actually talked to me. At least not in words, not in English. I was playing Uthar the Elder, and I had gotten to like the seventh level, you know, the one with the lava pits?"

"Um, no, not even a little bit." My response brought that quick sheepish grin from him, that one I adored and promised myself I would seek out more often. That grin of admission that yes, I _did_ get to be the girl in this. At least some of the time. I kissed him because he was there, within reach.

"Dawn -"

"Okay, listening mode fully engaged, promise," I said, settling against him.

"He put his hand on my shoulder, and then he was just... in my head. I didn't get most of it, just that his name was Nheg'raal, and that he was my father, and he could see everything that was in me, everything that I was and would be. I don't think he was human, Dawn, not exactly."

"Wow." I couldn't think of anything more coherent.

"Yeah."

"So that was it? He dropped by to say _hi_? No insightful revelations? Just heavy with the mysterious and the cryptic and then, bam! Gone? Vanished back into the ether, never to be seen again?"

"Well, after that I started being able to summon demons. But, um...I think that might be from my mom's side of the family."

The story was disturbing and sad and it had happened such a long time ago, I didn't want to believe that it could have anything to do with us now. But I wasn't that naive, the story was about identity. Sooner or later, your identity always came back to bite you in the ass, at least in my experience. Nobody got to escape who they were.

A chill scurried down my spine. It was like I was stuck in a slasher movie, walking backwards through a darkened kitchen, waiting for the cat to jump out of the cabinet and make me jump, fifteen minutes before the real action began. Just how did those cats ever get into those cabinets anyway? They never explained that in the movies.

"That was what you couldn't tell me before, wasn't it, Andrew? What you kept trying to say for weeks and couldn't-"

"I remembered when I woke up in the apartment hallway after you left. The fog just kind of, I don't know, lifted."

"Woke up?"

"I...I stayed. I thought you would come back," he said.

"I'm sorry! Oh god, I'm so sorry!" I sat back, needing him to see how much I meant it. I couldn't let him think that I was just presuming he'd forgive me; that I took it for granted.

He met my gaze, without defense or artifice. "Please don't leave me again, not like that."

"I won't, I swear, never again. I'm so sorry," I said. I leaned in and kissed the top of his cheekbone, tasting salt. "I'm sorry," I said again, kissing the other side and finding wet trails there. "I'm so sorry."

He took a shuddering breath and then another. "I know, me too, and it's okay now. It's going to be okay, Dawnie." There was a strength in his tone I'd never heard before. The fragility had fallen away. He would move mountains for me, or at least photon torpedo his way through them if he had to, if I let him. And probably even if I didn't. We sat clutching each other, breath mingling until the laptop on the bed made a buzzing sound indicating that it wanted to download software updates.

"I have to show you something," Andrew said. He hopped off the bed and disappeared into his room, re-emerging almost immediately with cupped hands.

"Check this out, you won't believe it!"

He said it like we were kids, sequestered in some tree house. There was this innocent, oh-gee-wiz quality, as if what I wouldn't believe was the cover of some new comic or the previous night's late movie, some cult classic, carefully recorded onto an actual VHS cassette, which we would watch over and over until we knew all of the lines by heart.

"I found it on the last training mission," Andrew said. He was practically glowing. "I don't see how it can be a coincidence, do you? I was going to show you earlier but you-"

"Is this a dagger I see before me, or were they just out of the paper cocktail umbrellas?" I had to joke about it. I had to try and laugh or I would start screaming and not be able to stop.

He was undaunted. "Dawn, it was just _there_ in the middle of the street! Like it was waiting for me."

The blade was no longer than my thumb. I took it from him, sliding my finger down the edge. A tiny thread of blood opened. It was sharp. "Stone knife-"

"Blue jewel." He finished.

"It looks like lapis," I said. The jewel was set into the middle of the delicate handle, about the size of an apple seed. "Did you know that lapis is supposed to bring clarity?"

"That makes sense," he said quietly. He didn't seem giddy anymore.

"You already know what it does, don't you?"

"Yeah. I had some time to research."

"And?"

"You're not going to like it."

"Try me."

"Demons. It's for summoning demons, Dawn." He picked up one of the books on the bed and began to flip through it, not looking at me.

"You're right, I hate it. What kind of demons?"

"Bokka oracle demons, two of them."

"Oracle demons, _of course_!" I drove the point of the knife into the cover of the nearest book in exasperation. "And, oh wait, lemme guess - one always lies and one always tells the truth - right? Right?"

"All demons lie, Dawn. These two just happen to speak some truths in between the lies. It's for the seeker to sort out which is which."

"Oh, good."

"Uh, it gets worse."

"And how, exactly, does it get worse?"

"Let go of the sharp object and I'll show you."

I acquiesced and he handed me the open book. I skimmed the page and glared up at him. "You're kidding. Please tell me you're kidding."

"It's right there, read it."

"I did. And I see the cute little line drawing of the little stone knife with its little blue jewel right here beside the explanatory blurb. And, lookie," I pointed, "Here's the nice clear diagram of the ritual, and the incantation ever-so-thoughtfully spelled out phonetically for those of us who aren't as fluent in Middle Bokkish dialects!"

"I know," he said.

La Bocca della Verità? Really? We're supposed to do the ritual at the Mouth of Truth? Damn it, Andrew! It's like we're being pranked on, like, a cosmic level! It's a freakin' manhole cover - come on!"

"I know," he said again. "Did you look at the moon chart yet?"

"Moon chart?"

"Next page."

My stomach rolled. "We have to do it tonight?"

"Apparently."

"What if I hadn't come back tonight?"

Andrew shrugged. "It would be one less absurd coincidence, one less giant neon sign blinking exit-here-now."

"Right. Well, I did ask for your professional opinion, didn't I?" I dropped the book in disgust.

He nodded, reaching out to me. I offered him my hands in resignation and he drew me up to stand with him.

"And now, you and me, we're going to raise a couple of demons, _on purpose_ Andrew? Then we're going to try and make them explain what's been happening to us?"

He raised my hands to his lips, kissing the knuckles of one and then the other. "Yeah. I think we are."


	17. Chapter 17

It didn't take us long to prepare. The thing is, it turns out that demon summoning isn't quite as labor-intensive as other magicks, not if you're working with a Summoner. They're natural conduits, and they're also their own salt. That is, they do innately what the salt circle is supposed to do for the average practitioner, contain the energy and form the sacred space.

Once Summoners come into their power, usually around the beginning of puberty, they never lose the gift. They never get rusty, they never forget how, and it doesn't matter if they swore off summoning; they can still do it almost as easily as breathing. Even if they promised your sister that they wouldn't ever to do anything _remotely_ like summoning demons again _ever_. If they love you and you need them to do it, then they can. They don't even need to warm up.

The ritual site was located in the portico of the church of Santa Maria in Cosmedin, down by the river. As with so many buildings in our adopted city, the church was built over a much older pagan temple. The Mouth of Truth was a circular slab of marble that had a face engraved on it with slits for eyes and a slot for its mouth. It was thought to actually be part of an ancient Roman fountain, or, like I said, a manhole cover.

The whole legend of it being a magical lie detector started in the Middle Ages. They thought that if you put your hand in the mouth and told a lie, it would get bitten off. The Bokka demons who inhabited the sub-dimension within the Mouth were, by Roman standards, relative newcomers. They had apparently only moved in within the past couple hundred years, after losing their homeland in the north during a demi-god war they had nothing to do with. You'd think they'd have seen it coming or something.

You could almost feel sorry for them. Almost. I lost the urge after Andrew nixed my idea of wearing my red circle skirt to the ritual in their honor. He said the demons had probably never even seen _Roman Holiday_, and even if they had, they wouldn't be impressed with my efforts. That should have been my first clue. Never trust demons with no sense of irony, especially not exiled oracle demons slumming it in the Mouth of Truth.

More intelligent, more mature, more responsible people would have just turned the whole thing over to the experts. It wasn't like we didn't have access to the experts. I don't know why we didn't. We should have. Demon summoning falls under the general heading of Dark Work, regardless of how pure and good your intentions might be.

"What'cha thinking, chica?"

I was shocked out of my reverie and answered truthfully before thinking about it first. "That my mom would have liked you."

"Oh," he said. He sounded surprised and a little wistful. "That...that's nice to hear."

In a more jovial mood, I would have added that my mother had been a terrible judge of character and had also liked pre-souled Spike and Ted the Robot. The mood, however, was anything but jovial; and I had just said the kind of thing you say when you think maybe you're not going to get another chance. Shit.

I was kind of thrown by Andrew's restraint. If there was ever an appropriate time to utter the words, 'I have a bad feeling about this', we were right on top of it. Even a year before he wouldn't have been able to resist. I wondered if it was a good sign or not.

"Are you ready?"

"Yeah," I said.

We knelt side by side on the ground in front of the Mouth. The book rested open in front of us, pages held open with the knife.

"Take my hand."

I took Andrew's hand. It was cold and a little clammy.

"Dawn, you know we don't have to do this. We can go anywhere you want. Do anything you want. You wanna move to Maui and toke up all day, fine. Ibiza and the bubble dances, sure - though, I kind of hope not because that sounds heinously boring after about a day or two. But you don't ever need to worry about money or anything like that. We should just go. Wherever."

Was he really trying to bail now, at the last minute?

"It won't work. What about final assignment? Your Slayer, whoever they assign to you, you'll be kind of consumed by that. You won't have time for my-"

Something in his face, hesitant, tentative, as if he expected that I might slap him at any moment. His head cocked to the side, like a puppy, patiently waiting for me to catch up. As usual. Oh.

"I'm your assignment."

He nodded, watching me, obviously trying to assess my reaction.

"Wait, _I'm_ your permanent assignment? How? Why?"

Once again, someone had interfered in my life without asking first. I wasn't sure how I felt about it. Confused. Irritated.

"Um..." His face flushed bright red. "You held my hand all night. There was the nature channel and then the infomercials. I had planned to die, I wanted to die...but you held me there. You left the hotel room when they called us to breakfast. I found Giles and told him that morning. He hadn't even thought that far, that you would need someone always, simply because of who you are. Someone you trusted, at least to an extent, but that you wouldn't suspect necessarily. We didn't want you to feel-"

"Like the proverbial fish in the fishbowl?"

"Well, yeah."

"So, instead of a Slayer, you're assigned to me? You're my Watcher?"

"Yes. I mean, sort of. Look, you're knee-deep in champions. You don't need yet another savior. You're so gifted, the solutions, the ways out, the roads up from hell you pave with your work. Someone should be there for you. To be a sounding board, to be a muse...to remind to you that you left your sweater in the dryer-"

The alarm on his cell began to buzz, interrupting him. The moon had reached the required point in the sky.

"Table this discussion just for now? Be as mad at me as you want later?"

I nodded. Just for now. Because this discussion was nowhere near over.

"Okay, Dawn, this is going to be kind of weird because they aren't actually going to come into this dimension. The incantation just softens the space between us and them a little. You'll be able to hear what they say, and you'll have a sense of them, but you won't exactly see them."

"You told me this part already."

"Sorry, I-"

"And you're _sure_ there's no way the Key can interfere with the ritual?"

"You told me that you weren't that anymore. I mean, we can just use my blood and they can answer questions about me, but if you want to see where and how our paths metaphysically cross, it has to be yours too."

Because it's always got to be blood. I knew the drill well enough.

"Dawnie, maybe we should wait. We can hit the moon cycle next month. We'd have more time to, I dunno, think about this. Maybe we could-"

"No." I shook my head. "No, I'm ready."

He took a breath and then another. "Alright. Just remember-"

"Let you do the talking. Don't speak to them at all, under any circumstances. And no matter what I hear or see, don't let go of your hand." I parroted back to him.

"God, it sounds like you actually _listen_ to me some of the time." He bent to adjust the position of the knife and skim over the text one more time. He could have almost passed as Giles-ish, if Giles had a somewhat higher voice and a southern Californian accent.

"Andrew?"

"Yeah?"

"I'm not done being mad yet, but I love you."

He didn't look up, but he did blush and smile into the book.

"I know."

I wasn't sure if it made me feel better or worse. Then again, there wasn't really any more time to worry about it. The ritual was beginning.

I listened to Andrew reciting the incantation and I didn't understand the language, but I was pretty sure it wasn't anything I hadn't heard before. We come in supplication, we request the blessing of your attention, ad nauseam.

He leaned down, picked up the knife, and handed it to me. I took it, straining to control my shaking. He extended his palm and I cut an X-shape into it. The blood came up and he smeared it across the top lip of the Mouth.

It didn't seem like the most sanitary ritual. I wondered if people ever got tetanus or necrotizing fasciitis doing this stuff. And then it was my turn. I passed the knife to Andrew and offered my hand.

It felt nothing like Doc cutting me at the top of the tower. You know how, when you go into the doctor's office for your annual checkup and there's always that one nurse you pray you'll get because their shots never hurt? Andrew could have been one of those nurses. I guess it was a convenient thing with our line of work and lifestyle choices.

I wiped my hand on the lower lip of the Mouth, spreading blood across it. As I sat back on my heels, the first surge of energy hit. I realized far, far too late that we should not have done this. We shouldn't be here. This place was not of the good, not at all, and neither were the things that were coming.

There was a terrible sort of silent explosion that shook the ground. The night around us went green, then blue. The temperature dropped and cold current rippled over us. Andrew had stopped chanting and was watching the Mouth. I pulled at him, trying to tell him without speaking.

_Forget it. We should run now._

He shook his head and squeezed my hand.

_Wait._

The Mouth began to howl, shrill and metallic. I could feel it in my teeth. And then, I began to see them. Well, not see them exactly, more like sense them. They had bodies like stretched out fetal pigs, with tails like scorpions and three malevolent red eyes each.

Andrew spoke to them in their language, but they answered in English. At least, it sounded like English in my head.

"You two - what a disaster!" One of them snarled. They were not a matched set. The one who spoke first was smaller.

"Love can't dwell with suspicion, bitch!"

"And you, you bed down with suspicion every night now, don't you?"

What were they talking about? It made no sense.

"You betrayed your sister when you let him touch you! You betrayed them all!"

A wave of disgust swept through me. Bile threatened in the back of my throat. I counted to ten. Backwards. In Aramaic. It didn't help.

"He's been playing you."

"What, you think you earned that devotion?" Screeched the larger demon.

"Stop it." I whispered.

"You're just a pawn!"

"I'm not. I'm...I-"

"You think he wanted _you_? Wrong parts, honey!"

I really was going to throw up. "You don't understand-"

None of it was true, of course. They were just doing what demons did. I shoved the panic down.

"You should have asked him who his father really is!"

"Ever wonder what his father did to you?"

"Whose father?" I asked.

"Never mind the mother!"

"The Lady! She's watching you! The Lady of the Yellow Sky!"

"Who's watching us?" I couldn't follow these demented caterwauling things. We should have run when we had the chance.

Andrew was squeezing my hand harder now. "Don't. Don't talk to them. Don't let them draw you in-"

"She watches all of you!"

I wished that I could remember the set of questions that Andrew was asking, but my mind had gone numb.

The larger one laughed wildly. "You should be more worried about your Summoner than us, little girlie!"

"You're dead, you know! He killed you all, burned you and yours long ago - you just haven't figured it out yet!" The smaller one joined its brother. Coworker. Whatever.

"Sliced you neck to knickers in your sleep! Did you think he was a _tame_ sociopath?"

"Once they spill blood they don't just quit! Sold you out the first chance he got!"

They were unspeakably horrible yellow wiggling twin migraines. Monsters. God, why had we ever come here?

"Hand down the mouth of the monster? The monster's bitten your hand off and you never even noticed!"

"Stupid, stupid girl, can't even let go of it!"

"Of what? Let go of what? Please, answer me!" I was begging now.

"Dawn, don't listen anymore, okay?" Andrew was trying to calm me. It wasn't working.

There was just something so obscene about these demons, so wrong.

"Obscenity? Obscenity is what you let him do!"

Fear crawled over my bones like a swarm of insects. "What do you-"

"Too late! You're bound now!"

Too late? What did it mean, too late?

"Bound together!"

"Bound forever!"

The demons scurried around us, circling us like prey, their claws clicking and scraping along the stone ground, barbed tails flicking back and forth. I bit the insides of my cheeks to keep from screaming until I tasted copper pennies.

Bound?

"No. No, you can't! Unbind me! Unbind me now!" I couldn't hear anymore, couldn't bear it anymore. I collapsed on the ground, instinctively covering my head with my arms, consumed in terror. I was out of bravery, out of hope, lost in their lies. I couldn't help it, couldn't stop it.

"Dawn!" Someone called my name. "Dawn!"

There was a low earthquake rumble and power hummed around us. It passed though my skin, searing the flesh beneath it, ripping the world apart. I had talked with demons, I had let their words infect my heart, and I had let go in fear during the one moment I should have held fast.

_Sorry. I'm so sorry._

My spine cracked and brittle pages of me emptied out, crumbling to dust as they hit the stone, lost forever. Unbound. Remaindered. The demons shrieked and thrashed in the air and then they were gone. I was alone.


	18. Chapter 18

The Polizia Municipale were used to my kind, sympathetic even. It wasn't like they didn't pick up wasted over-privileged American college kids all the time, kids who came over and treated the continent like their own personal Disneyland. Just another refugee from those pristine white-gated communities across the sea, with names like The Enclave and The Woodlands, because the people who lived there were so intellectually bankrupt they couldn't think of any real names for their towns anymore. I was just another over-dosed rich brat, to be tiredly patted and placated until family could be located to retrieve me.

I tried to tell them, tried to explain I had lost something, something important and couldn't remember what. Something as important as air. They agreed. To be fair, when you find a person at a major tourist site in the middle of the night, surrounded by occult paraphernalia, sobbing and clawing and bleeding all over your country's national treasures, you might tend to assume that she has indeed lost something.

They were trying to give me something, hot chicken broth maybe. It was salty. Then Buffy was there, and I kept trying to tell her how sorry I was, that I hadn't meant to lose him.

"Lose who?" she asked.

I opened my mouth to answer. It was so important, so vital that she be told before it was too late. I opened my mouth, but the answer popped and vanished like a soap bubble.

"I don't know! I should know...I should-"

She petted my hair, soothing me and thanking the officers over and over. She rose and followed one of them to a desk and began signing forms. There must have been something more than chicken in that broth. The floor began to tilt gently upwards and then someone else was holding me, whispering in my ear.

"Whoa, sweetie. I've got you. It's okay. Got you now. Close your eyes."

He kissed my cheek in a practiced, familiar way, scratching me with two-day stubble as he pulled back. He smelled like sweat and the chemical compound we used for removing demon goo of the stickier variety from swords and axes. I had gone to sleep enveloped by that fragrance over and over until I barely noticed it at all. Except that I hadn't. It was all wrong.

"Don't." I started to pull away, trying to stand up. The room slid out from under me.

Buffy held me in the back seat of the car, cradling me. I pressed my face into her shoulder, shivering.

"Connor," she said.

"Yeah?" Came the voice of the driver.

"We're going to find whoever did this to my sister." The chill in her tone contrasted sharply with the warmth of her arms. "We're going to find them and _take them out_. I don't care who it was and I don't care how long it takes."

"Agreed," he answered grimly.

I wanted to explain. I wanted to say it was me. I'm the one you should blame. I did it. If only I knew what I had done.


	19. Chapter 19

"We investigated the site remotely," came Willow's voice crackling over the speaker. "There was definite residual energy resonating down there. The ashes were most likely paper of some kind, probably a book, and the knife-"

_Blue jewel stone knife_

The phrase echoed in my head, meaningless.

Giles spoke over her. "The knife appears to be related to an extinct demon clan. The last of them perished in a particularly brutal feud involving the disputed territories of..."

I was supposed to be taking minutes. Usually, I was fairly competent with the secretarial chores. My sister had called a senior staff meeting, all hands on deck. This morning, all hands meant Arturo Bianchetti, Buffy, me, Faith, and Connor, plus Giles from Berlin and Willow from Glastonbury joining in on a video conference phone system that wouldn't have looked out of place on a TGN set.

It was so different from the days of huddling together at The Magic Box. There were no books of prophecy here, no smell of candles and herbs, and almost never any sarcastic and inappropriate quips during tense moments. So many of our new friends didn't get Scooby humor and we couldn't afford to alienate people.

Our meeting room had once served as the old stables behind the house, and had been renovated by Xander and several very short, exceedingly jolly Bavarian men. They built up it like a fortress. The stone walls were easily three feet thick and blocked most noise from the outside. The space had fluorescent lighting instead of windows, and it's own separate generator, just in case.

The sleek office furnishings contrasted sharply with the organic roughness of the stone. There was lots of chrome and steel and vinyl. We had managed to purchase the world's most uncomfortable chairs.

I twisted in my seat, cramped. I hadn't been able to sleep much and had burned the coffee this morning. No one seemed to mind, they just added more sugar and didn't complain. I took a sip, trying not to gag as it went down, bitter and acrid.

Buffy had repeatedly assured me that I didn't need to be here. That they could handle it and I should rest, but I couldn't stay away. I needed to know what had happened to me.

"And she still doesn't remember who-"

"No, Giles." My sister answered immediately, protective as always. "She doesn't remember anything after we had lunch at Cafe Coppa yesterday."

She was wrong about that. I couldn't remember lunch either. I was feeling lucky to remember my own name at the moment, and too tired to correct her.

Faith's cell phone went off, blaring, "Do You Wanna Touch Me". She glanced over the message, smirked, and began typing a reply with her thumbs.

"Maybe we could look at the police report...let's see...page three in your packets?" Said Willow.

Papers rustled as everyone obediently flipped pages.

"Apparently, when they first found her...oh, here: 'Sorry, Andrew, I'm sorry'...hmmm...ring any bells with anyone? Do we know anybody by that..."

"One of her kidnappers?" It was the first thing Connor had said. He'd spent most of the first hour of the meeting doodling around the edges of the agenda packet with a purple highlighter pen borrowed from Buffy and tapping his heels in uneven rhythm under the table. Being still was almost as uncomfortable for him as enclosed spaces.

His hair fell across his eyes and every so often he peeked at me from underneath it, wary as though I was a dangerous thing that might explode at any time. He had good instincts. If he didn't stop fidgeting I was probably going to kick him. Hard.

Arturo laid a warm, callused hand on my shoulder. "We have no evidence that our Aurora was taken against her will." He was trying to be kind, reassuring. "Perhaps a fellow student, someone from one of her classes-"

"She wouldn't just go down there in the middle of the night and not tell anyone!" Connor snapped. "And she sure as hell wouldn't be performing some demonic blood ritual without backu - ow!"

I couldn't help it. He wasn't the only one talking like I wasn't in the room, but his shins were the most accessible.

"You're speculating in circles - all of you." I said.

"You have remembered something, piccola?" Arturo asked.

"No. No, but this isn't going anywhere."

Buffy swiveled in her chair to face me, arms crossed. "And what, exactly, do you expect us to do, Dawn?"

I took a breath. That was the question, wasn't it?

"Look, I'll start running the name and some variations through the databases tonight. Then tomorrow, I'll go over to the church and try to get an actual physical sample of the ash to send to Will for testing and also just be there. Spend some time. Maybe something will pop, I don't know.

"Dawn-"

"No," I said firmly. "I'm fine. I'll be fine. You guys need to move on to agenda item number four now...um...page seven."

The room went quiet. Even Faith put her cell phone down, watchful.

Finally, Giles said, "You're quite sure, Dawn?"

"Completely."

Buffy's eyes flickered toward Connor. "You. Assist her."

He gave her a sharp nod, very carefully not looking at me at all. "Got it."

I sighed. Assist her? What my sister meant, of course, was _protect her_. Tie her to a tree if you have to, even if she glares and hisses. Even if she kicks. I almost felt bad for him, poor damned fool, stuck in the middle.

"Well then," Giles said, "I suppose this brings us to the Alice Springs issue. Everyone has reviewed the report?"

"Kennedy's flight gets into Sydney tomorrow at noon," Buffy answered. "She'll meet with the team there and they'll head out to begin the assessment."

"And Xander is-"

"Back from Madrid late tonight, Giles."

"And so, friends," Arturo said, "we think a war is possible?"

War. Again.

_There's a big fight coming, and I don't know what's going to happen._

I shivered. Where had that come from?

I returned to Santa Maria in Cosmedin the following day to scoop what might have been either book or cigarette ash into a little plastic bag to mail to Willow for further examination. Like she was some kind of mystical forensics guru. Well, she was the best chance we had. In our world, it was like the man said...specialization? Strictly for insects. Everybody wore multiple hats.

I slipped the bag into my pocket and stepped closer to the Mouth, running my left hand down the nose of it, over the gaping lips. It appeared to have been cleaned recently. You could hardly blame them. They couldn't just leave bloodstains around to freak out the tourists. I was lucky they even let me near it. If I'd been head of Basilica security, I'd have banned me.

I placed my right beside the left one against the stone and closed my eyes, trying to recall why I had been here. As much as it pained me to admit it, Connor had been right, I couldn't imagine any reason why I would have come here alone. I tried to sense the residual energy Willow had mentioned. I tried to think of people I'd spent time with recently, of books I'd read, article and reports I'd written, anything to connect me to this place. I tried to remember something, feel something_._

I left when the German tourist group arrived, followed by Connor who was completely pissed that I'd left the house without him. I had no more information than when I arrived. He insisted on escorting me on the return trip, trailing my company sedan in his blue Fiat, possibly as much as ten inches from my back bumper, but I wouldn't swear on it. I took the narrowest, most winding streets I could find, making liberal use of my brake and limiting turn signals.

Back at home, I checked the searches running on my laptop. The Council database revealed four Watchers and other staff by the name of Andrew between 1900 and the current date, all deceased as of December 31, 2003. The Roman equivalent of the WhitePages held sixteen instances of people who used the English spelling of the name and close to a thousand using the Italian equivalent, Andrea, as well as myriads of Andrés, Andreys, Andreis, Andrejs, András, Andrés, Andreas, Andreus, Anders, and Anteros.

Needle, meet haystack. Never mind that the name had been heard only by kindly men whose first language was not English and who were awfully busy trying to calm me down. I could have been rambling about anything. When Willow had more time, she would guide me through the process of hacking into the government agency system where the passport barcodes of foreigners entering the country were stored. Then maybe we could figure some cross-ref parameters.

Not that Willow had much spare time at the moment, imminent badness and all. I did my best to suck it up and be a good little soldier. I went back to work. I attempted normal. I shrugged off the funny pangs and twinges of unease that hit most everyday. It was normal to feel these things, after such an unsettling experience, and certainly normal considering what our people might be soon facing in the Southern Hemisphere.

I chose not to notice the impossible yearning in my chest. I ignored the flashes of phantom imagery piercing my consciousness with increasing frequency. I pretended that I didn't wake up in the night, eyelids sticky with tears. I couldn't explain those things, except that they weren't normal.

Normal was Faith belting out "Mercedes Benz" in the shower down the hall before chilly morning tai chi and vowing to enter a monastery if she didn't get laid soon.

"Uh, don't you mean a nunnery?" Xander asked.

"Meant what I said," she answered, grinning like a wolf. He left the table soon after that.

Normal included Maria Bianchetti bringing food over night after night because none of us could be bothered to cook much. Normal was all of my favorite sweaters ending up shrunken or shredded in the laundry, just as winter was approaching and truly deranged transatlantic hours on the phone with Spike, who was going through some bizarre email-aversion thing since he and my sister had broken up yet again. It was the steady drip from the ceiling into a cheap aluminum stockpot in the hallway, heralding the beginning of the rainy season.

Normal was the grime of the shared house, crammed with people and their issues and their stuff and their, well, grime. Normal was the constant compulsive bickering with Connor, who, bless-his-heart, as our Texan girls would say, couldn't do one damned thing to suit me, for whatever reason.

A month after the incident at the Mouth, I decided to just drop it. I had looked for motives and purposes. I had worked the problem, sorting through the facts, finally concluding that it was just another spell, just another chapter of nefarious mojo for no good reason, perpetrated by mysterious forces I would probably never understand.

We continued moving forward at a decidedly normal 30 kilometers a second or 67,000 miles per hour around our home star. The demand of the now overwhelmed everything. My notebooks began to fill up with bits on Uluru and Arrerntean prophecy and antipodean geology and other esoterica.

_Your work saves lives._

Apocalypse or not, I was jealous of our field ops' escape from the gray skies of Europe. Another year, another war, the longer I lived, the less individual meaning they seemed to have.

I was still sleeping alone, even though I knew was more than welcome if I ever chose to open the bathroom door and cross over the cold tiles to the room adjoining it. But I didn't want to have to try and explain to Connor why I couldn't fall asleep without old _Enterprise_ episodes playing on my laptop. It didn't make sense, even to me. Scott Bakula was great and all, but I could relate to Sam Beckett with the Swiss-cheesed brain way more than Captain Archer.

Even with the white noise, it usually took me a few hours to fall asleep anyway, laying there in the glow of the security floods outside that shone through the lace curtain. The cold damp air would blow through the cracks and fissures around the window, making scattered yellow shapes over the ceiling. Weather stripping was a project Xander was probably going to have to put off until spring at this point.

_The patterns, Dawn, watch the patterns._

And that soft voice in my head these days? I couldn't explain that either.


	20. Chapter 20

By the end of November, I began making plans to attend a linguistics conference in Prague. I was filling out the Howard Foundation form for the travel funds grant when I noticed the logo in the upper right hand corner. Inside the vertical rectangle box was a slightly abstracted line drawing of the Venus de Milo against a yellow background dotted with three five-pointed stars.

Something about it...something...there was something here I should see. Something I was supposed to know about this. There was the creeping, itching sensation at the back of my neck.

_The Lady of the Yellow Sky, She watches all of you._

I shivered, signed the form, and reached out to drop the pen back into the mug on the desk where its brothers lived. Again, I felt that creeping itch. I picked up the mug, turning it in my hands. There was a picture on it of a cartoon man with long white hair, a bristling white mustache, and a tall black hat with a red bow on the front. He looked fierce.

Where had the mug come from? Was it Connor's? He wasn't into anime or anything like that. I'd tried to ask him once, if the lawyers' spell had been any better at managing hanging threads and narrative detail tracking than the monks'.

Well, what I'd said specifically was, "I ended up with a lot of sci-fi and fantasy trivia, what'd you get?"

He'd shrugged, bored with the topic, as though we were kids talking about Christmas gifts after Valentine's Day. "Baseball stats mainly."

Replicant. I looked like a Replicant. I squeezed a dollop of makeup remover on a cotton ball and began wiping away the night's glamour that was smeared under my eyes.

Buffy and I had spent the past sixteen hours playing host-slash-tour guides to Samantha Finn and a couple of appropriately mysterious VIPs, Hilda and Colin No-last-name. We took them to Fori Imperiali, The Pantheon, and Trevi Fountain. We'd dined at La Pergola, braving the crowds. We'd even managed to hit Gregory's after dinner for the final set led by some Marsalis cousin before calling it a night and dropping them off at their hotel.

Most of it was just window dressing, a pretty stage for shoptalk. I was only half-listening when the car passed the Basilica. It was different at night, alive. I sat in the far back seat of the limo with my sister, legs tucked under me, leaning against the door. My skin began to sting in tiny pinpoints, like when you cook bacon in a skillet that's too hot and it pops at your arms.

They'd run any number of tests on me. I wasn't under any kind of magical influence. Not recently.

I scratched at my arms.

Andrew. It was such a common name. Andrew was the name they told me I was screaming when the police found me. I had searched for some link with that name for a long time, finding nothing.

So where was he? What if this person wasn't yet another nutty cultist trying to use the Key? What if someone had gotten hurt or killed trying to help me?

_You're the only truth I have._

What if I had lost someone important?

"You okay?" Connor appeared behind me, wearing the same black sweatpants and t-shirt all of the senior staff slept in. We ordered them in bulk from LL Bean.

I met the reflection of his gaze in the mirror, trying not to acknowledge what he saw.

"You're right," I wanted to tell him. "I look sickly pale. Yes, you can see too much of my cheek and collar bones and, yes, I've had too many dinners consisting mainly of wine for too many nights in a row. No, I don't sleep much. No, I don't sleep with you _at all _anymore. Wanna make somethin' of it? Wanna fight about it again? Because I don't think I have the strength tonight."

What I said was, "Yeah."

His hands went to my shoulders and he turned me around to face him. "I don't believe you."

"Then believe what you want."

"Dawn-"

"Don't," I said.

I shrugged out of his grasp and took refuge in my room. He followed, sitting on the edge of the bed next to me.

"Listen," I said. "You've been so patient, and it isn't fair. I know it isn't fair, but-"

"It's okay. I get it." He crossed his arms over his stomach. Kind of like I'd punched him.

"It just feels...wrong somehow. Not you. You haven't done anything wrong, I swear. I mean, I can't explain it but-"

"Ever since the night of the ritual, Dawn-"

"If that's what it was! I don't even know for certain. I just...I'm different now. Something happened to me there, maybe...I'm beginning to think something happened to everything."

His eyes went wide, his jaw twitching slightly. "You mean _literally_ everything, don't you - the whole world altered? Reality shift? "

"I can't prove it or anything, I just...feel it. Like something's missing, or someone. If an entire person can be inserted into the world," I gestured toward him, "or a life and history radically restructured, couldn't a person be removed? Disappeared?"

"Seems likely," he sighed.

"Then why would I feel it? Shouldn't it be seamless? Shouldn't everything be business as usual?"

His hand went to my back, palm tracing over my shoulder blades, down my spine.

"When the mind gets over-written, you start to get...static. You can almost see where the original lines were drawn. They're ghosts; erased, but the impression is left in the paper, you know? At least that's-"

"That's what happened to you?" I finished.

"With me and Vail's work, it was just the one time," he said. "You, how many times in Sunnydale -"

"A lot more than once," I said.

"Mmmm. Figured. Man, I hate magic."

"Neither of us would be here without it."

"Point taken. Still."

"Yeah."

I let him pull me into his arms, resting my head on his chest.

"What do you think it does to a person's mind, over time? Being repeatedly over-written? Do you end up with the brain equivalent of disc fragmentation?" I asked.

He chuckled. "Then you would have to get defragmented at some point - right? Reorganize the files into single directories, or you know, the smallest number of contiguous regions, compact the whole thing-"

"Uh...is this supposed to be turning me on?" Oddly, it kind of was. Not that I planned on sharing that information.

"I don't know," he murmured, "is it working?"

His breath was warm in my ear, his fingers kneading the tightness in my shoulders.

"Did it ever work at Stanford?" I asked, trying for levity.

"Mmmm, maybe. Kinda. Before it all went keblouey."

God, it was tempting, not really for the sex itself, but for the solace, the familiarity of it, the simplicity of feeling normal again, or at least pretending for a while. He shifted, and then he was kissing my jaw and down my throat and god, god, it was so good and so warm and I just...

Couldn't do it.

And I had no idea why.

I pushed back from him, palms flat on his chest. His hand fell away immediately, and he watched me, waiting. I could almost taste him.

"I thought we could…just for tonight-" He began.

"I can't." I said.

"I just want...I know how much it sucks to feel like, I don't know, a puppet of the Powers. Sometimes you have to forget about it for a little while." He said softly.

I shook my head. "Check it out - super poseable action figure Dawn, now with extra angst-ing feature! Act now and get-"

He pressed his lips hard against mine before I could finish.

"Stop it! Just stop!" I scrambled backward. "Don't you get it? You can't just fuck me all better, Connor! Haven't you figured that out yet?"

He was up, backing away slowly, cheeks flushed. "Dawn! Dawn, I'm sorry. I didn't mean-"

"I know," I said. "Just go. Please."

His whole body sagged, weary. Resigned. "Okay."

So what if Buffy originally had another sister before the monks started meddling? Or a brother? What if that's who I was down at the Basilica with? They said I kept calling for someone named Andrew. So what if he...no. Down that path lay far too many uncomfortable possibilities.

I had started a project the year before, with Giles, attempting to improve the detail and accuracy in the Council record of Buffy's life between 1995 and 2004, as well as providing additional context. We had discussed then how differently I remembered certain things, how my recollections of pre-2000 events felt kind of flexible somehow, compared to the diamond-hard quality of those after.

He'd tried to reassure me that this was just as likely a consequence of childhood as monk inadequacy. He told me that he was shocked sometimes, when he looked at early pictures of himself or, or caught an old scent or taste, stirring up long-forgotten moments. Otherwise the retrieval took conscious effort.

"Everyone has triggers," he'd said, "Things that take them back."

I'd teasingly cut him off before he began to start going on about dipping madeleines in tea. Again. "And by _everyone,_ you mean old people."

Triggers. Internal or external cues symbolizing or resembling an aspect of a traumatic event, if the incident at the Mouth counted. I was beginning to suspect it definitely counted. So far, my triggers included the Mouth itself, mugs, logos, and, oh yeah, sex with my gorgeous, family-approved, superhero-esque boyfriend. Not going to be doing _that_ anymore. Nope.

Because it felt like the betrayal of an idea of something that never happened. Oh boy.

Girlfriends, I needed girlfriends. Not significant other girlfriends, but the kind who you turn to after you've broken up with your absurdly perfect shiny-armored Galahad.

I needed the kind of girlfriends who take you out to get your nails done while devouring tubs of Haagen Dazs and trading tidbits of Bollywood gossip because Hollywood not being there anymore is one of those tragic taboo topics that's so completely inappropriate in breakup recovery mode. Besides, Akshay Kumar and Priyanka Chopra were way more interesting than Jessica Simpson and what's-his-face.

Things might have gone differently if I'd had a couple of plucky gal pals to confess to and confer with. The house was filled to bursting with girls, but like my sister, they were focused on the end of the world. Occupational hazard and all. I'd sort of connected with Mabel's daughter Diane for a while, but she'd been shipped out to Pretoria. It would have been just too creepy and Scottie Ferguson anyway. It wasn't like I could stop seeing Tara when I looked at her.

There was Faith, our glorious one-woman-show of a bad example. She'd have been up for a few bar nights for sure, but her cure for ye olde broken heart would include the pursuit of other anatomy, mostly male. If I could have followed her lead, I wouldn't have needed to dump said knight in the first place.

I called Willow at three in the morning at one point. She was pretty amicable about it, considering. I tried to talk to her about the deep stuff, the real stuff, about recovering self. I guess I expected to hear some magnificently magical answer, but she just babbled about how she'd lost her keys once and spent most of the next day re-tracing her steps until she found them in the pocket of a jacket discarded for its over-warmth.

"The secret is to work back through to the beginning, and then run it forward again, sweetie," she said.

"Great. Thanks." I said. Then I apologized for the lateness of the hour and hung up.

_Too hot in here, in the van...the van...it's bigger on the inside. Lying on the blanket, ugly animal print...zebra, giraffe, and...cow? One of these things is not like the others...oughta burn it, it's dirty. Sticky. Sticky all over, should clean up. Need to clean up, but he said wait. He's coming back with the components, making wicked cool jet packs. For us. Wait. Watch the sway of the plastic bead curtain breaking up the light into blue-_

"Dawn!"

"Mmph?" The mattress dipped and I rolled over to face him. The bottle rolled with me as I moved.

"What's that?"

"Xander, meet my girlfriend, Tuica. She's from Romania, at least that's what I think it says on the label.

"I'm assuming we have Faith to thank for this?"

I tried to nod and it made the bed bob like a boat. "Poly...I mean possibly...uh, probably. You want some?" I held the bottle out to him. "She's cool with sharing, poly bottle and all."

He grimaced. "No thanks. And you've possibly, probably had enough too."

"Nope, not nearly enough." I made a wild grab for the bottle, but he took it from me, handling it like a grenade or something found at the bottom of a septic tank.

"So...you two are all Wuthering Heights again?" He asked carefully.

"It's not Andrew's fault-"

Xander's brows went together. "Connor. You and Connor. Um...who's Andrew?"

A jolt went through me, a surge of power and a bright green flash and then nothing, a letter from the front lines, sent home during battle, black-lined. Censored.

"I don't know. I should know. I should, but I don't."

"Know what?"

It was slipping away, slipping away from us. The dragon in my head would swallow it all up.

"Something's missing," I said. "Or...someone's missing. I just can't...can't quite...I've tried. And I can't. It's on a high shelf, can you reach it?"

Xander brushed a stray strand of hair out of my face. Even this close, you couldn't tell which eye was original and which wasn't as he blinked, trying to make sense of me.

"Did you ever have an imaginary friend," I asked. "When you were little? Someone you believed in completely, who you could even almost see? That's how it is. Can you understand?"

I wanted so much for him to understand.

He sighed. "I understand that a Dawnster old enough for adjoining rooms with anybody known as The Destroyer is probably a little too grown up for imaginary friends."

_She'll be back to normal as soon as he gets home, she always is._

But nobody was coming home and there was no back to normal. This was it.

There was just Xander, who might have once cajoled me with salami and peanut butter sandwiches and curled up on the couch with me for back-to-back episodes of _Shark Week_ while we waited for my sister to come home from patrol. Xander who had gracefully, graciously, stepped aside, relinquishing role of Chief Dawn Protector without comment after the Santorini thing with Connor. Hadn't made a fuss at all. Oh, I suspect there was some amount of off-screen hurt-her-and-die-super-powered-or-not posturing because most guys seemed to just kind of be that way, but the transition had been smooth enough.

_Except that it hadn't. It didn't happen that way. He didn't-_

"Guess you need to sleep it off." Xander patted my shoulder, tired smile edging around the corners of his mouth.

"Mmm, possibly. Probably."

He rose to his feet. "I really just came in to give you this. Figured it was safer in here than in the kitchen pantry." He fished into the pocket of his jacket and pulled out a jar, which he set on the nightstand. "Anya said to remind you that you now owe her exactly $27.55. You ladies and your over-priced organics, you know it's all made in the same factory - right? Jiff and Skippy and all those other companies just subcontract for the right to put their names-"

Tuica and I were having a nasty spat. She kept trying to crawl back up my throat.

"Anna. You mean Anna Johnston, don't you?"

"Did she hire new staff without clearing it through HR _again_?" He gave a pained moan. "I swear she does this just to make my life harder! I was just in the Newark office this morning and she didn't say a damned thing about it. She just gave me the jar and told me to inform you she's officially withholding further peanut butter shipments until the cash hits her PayPal. Man, I hate it when she does this! Anya just doesn't get - no, scratch that. No, she totally does!"

Xander was digging for his cell phone. "Um...get some rest, okay? I gotta deal with this." He turned and exited, clomping loudly down the stairs. I could hear him leaving grumpy voicemail...for a woman who'd been gone almost four years.

_She was incredible. She died saving my life._

But she didn't.

Anya sat beside me at the back of the bus as we drove away, watching for my sister. She'd squeezed my hand when we heard the thump as Buffy landed on the roof.

Anya Jenkins ran the Newark office and shared my fondness for Newman organics.

No.

Anna Johnston ran the Newark office and Anya Jenkins was cut down by a Bringer knife in the North Hall.

But I'd been with Xander that day in the Atrium, so I couldn't have been with Anya...but we wouldn't have left her alone either. I saw her die, but I couldn't have seen it.

Both things couldn't be true.

Premises check: either I was mistaken in identifying the contradiction or one of the contradicting concepts was improperly formed. Either Anya was dead or Anya was alive, there was no third door. It was like the beginning of a sick and twisted joke, Schrödinger's Ex-Vengeance Demon walks into Sunnydale High School...

I sat up and slowly picked up the jar and unscrewed the lid, inhaling peanutty goodness.

The two ideas made each other impossible, unless of course, you were me. In that case, Ben was Glory and Glory was Ben. Believing in impossible ideas before breakfast? I'd had lots of practice. It was one of my best things.

Hungry for the first time in days, I scooped into the peanut butter with my fingers and brought them to my mouth.


	21. Chapter 21

**A/N: Many thanks to B. and Sophie and Sian (especially Sian after this section!) for advice, cheerleading, beta reading, and putting up with me in general.**

My work was getting sloppy. I was letting people down. No one had said anything yet, my nearest and dearest all being caught up in war prep and politics, but it was apparent enough. I couldn't teach my problems to swim at the bottom of a bottle, so reluctantly I sought professional guidance.

Mabel didn't just slap a PTSD diagnosis on my chart and go with it. She didn't even seem that concerned with what might or might not have happened at the basilica. She told me that therapy wasn't like a spell, at least her practice wasn't. She couldn't just wave a wand around and chant _Expecto Patronum_ or whatever and make everything okay. It would require teamwork, her effort and mine. This would be about exploration and examination.

She wasn't kidding about the work part. It took talking. Lots of talking, and debating ideas and homework...well, journaling. I hated that part. I tried to tell her that it made me queasy, the thought of returning to a habit that was part of the persona designed by the monks and didn't feel like mine anymore.

She said that we should talk about it, but that, just for now, she hoped I would try it out. She said the writing part wasn't as important as the recording part; that I could cut out pictures from magazines and glue them in to represent my thoughts and feelings, or draw in the journal with crayons or use cuneiform if it felt more natural. Documentation was supposed to help with the now near-constant sense of reality shifting.

There was lots of looking at stuff I wasn't that comfortable looking at. I trusted her completely though. Partly because she was Diane's mother, but also there was this kind of instinctive rightness about Mabel, with her short frizzy hair that wasn't quite blonde and not quite gray, the abundance of peachy blush applied to her high sharp cheekbones, the odd-to-my-ear lilt of her South African accent. She was just...good. But it didn't make the process any more enjoyable, and frequently it was downright uncomfortable.

"...And sex? Dawn?"

She'd caught me glazing again.

"No! I mean...no, not now."

"It wasn't an accusation," she said.

"It feels like it should be. Connor's been great about it. He's...really a good person, you know? I just can't. It's...it's become one of those points of cognitive dissonance, a thing that seems both true and false."

Mabel nodded. "Sometimes when we feel threatened or vulnerable, the last thing we want is-"

"Um...can we move onto something else?"

She paused and sipped her coffee. "Of course. Is there maybe something from your journal that you'd like to share?"

I opened the green Moleskine resting on my knees and thumbed through the pages. Some days it seemed like each page was booby-trapped, even the blank ones. Especially the blank ones.

A black and white line drawing downloaded from the Council archive caught my attention. The caption underneath it read, Glarghk Guhl Kashmas'nik Demon.

"I found this." My hand shook slightly as I passed the notebook over to her. Booby-trapped. If I looked up I would see a giant Acme safe plunging downwards at me.

Mabel looked over the illustration, the expression in her hazel eyes neutral. "And what does this picture mean to you?"

"Well, my sister was attacked by one once, years ago. Its toxin caused this elaborate hallucination. She came to believe that she was mentally ill and living in an institution and that me and Xander and Will weren't real. She thought the only way that she could be healed was to kill us all and symbolically end the delusion. She captured us one by and tied us up in the basement."

The really cool thing about Mabel? You just couldn't shock her.

Mabel leaned forward. "What a frightening experience that must have been. Does it feel significant to you now?"

"Yes, but that's not the important part."

"It's not?"

"No." I let out a breath. "The important part is that it seems like...I mean, I don't see how it's possible, but I sort of...I think I summoned it."

"Like your experience with..." Mabel paused and turned back several pages in her notebook, "the demon, Halfrek? Your wish to-"

"No. I remember that clearly, and it was mostly a mistake. This is different, it's sort of fuzzy, like a dream, but it was...I think it was deliberate, done with malicious intent. But Mabel, I would never have done anything like that! Not even at my angriest, most miserable."

"And have you spoken with your sister about this?"

"Yeah, a little bit, as soon as I started thinking about it. She said she knows I didn't do it."

"Do you know who did?"

"No, we never found out. Not for certain."

"But you have your suspicions."

"Yeah." I found myself wishing that Mabel had the stereotypical black leather shrink's couch in her office. I wanted to pull myself into a ball. I was feeling exposed.

"So," she said. "You mentioned a dream. Shall we talk about the dreams a little?"

I shuddered. I didn't want to talk about the dreams. They were too much like looking through someone's photo album and finding pictures of yourself that you knew weren't really taken. They turned my world on its head, shadows that never were.

"You're still experiencing the dreams, right?"

"Some of them are just fragments," I said. "Places I've never seen, people I've never met...except him. Those are the worst, and I mean, it's so weird, it's not a real memory or anything like that. I never met him in person, except for that one time because of Will."

"Go on."

"Um...actually, I'm beginning to see two different faces in the dreams. One is sweet and wistful. He's always kind of nurturing and adoring, but I don't recognize him. The other is...well, I wish I didn't. Recognize him that is. I mean, I know that having dreams about people doesn't literally mean that you want them, but why does it have to be _him?_ I wake up feeling just...dirty."

"Ah, yes." Mable's tone went low and gentle. "The man responsible for Tara's death? You're still seeing him in the dreams?"

"Not just seeing him! Being with him, _touching_ him."

"You mean sexually?"

I nodded, mute with revulsion.

"And do you remember how you feel during these episodes?"

"I love him so much," I told her. "I would do anything for him. It's disgusting! How could I? How could I feel that way?"

She quietly moved the box of tissues from the end table to the arm of my chair. I needed them.

"Have you considered that these two faces might be the same man, Dawn?"

"What?" I wiped my nose.

"Symbolically. Perhaps they could represent two halves of a problem. What we might be dealing with here is your distrust of and disappointment with the men in your life: your father-"

"Hank Summer's is _not_ my father."

"And Spike, to whom you've mentioned you more easily attach that label, and the men of the old Council, and of course the monks who created this existence for you in the first place. What do you think about that, Dawn?"

"I'm not sure. If that which is masculine is read as necessarily violent and destructive, maybe the dreams could be seen as a possible subconscious attempt to re-balance that dynamic, to choose diffusion of that rage energy, to choose healing, forgiveness, reconciliation and acceptance?" I spoke hopefully, wanting the answers to come quickly, easily.

"Perhaps," Mabel said.

"And having sex with someone can be literally taking a part of them into you - right?" I plunged on. "Of course it certainly doesn't like, have to be, but it can be. So I could be internalizing my need for acceptance...in a way"

"You've done significant research on this, haven't you?" She asked.

"Well, yeah," I said. "I have to _deal_ with it, and I needed to know how."

Mabel smiled, the lines around her mouth and eyes crinkling with genuine warmth. "You must be patient with this. It's part of your strength, that courage you have, that determination. But time is a part of the process too. All of the education in the world cannot fill that requirement. I'm convinced that the prevalence of magical solutions to so many of the challenges you have faced in the past skews perspective. The healthy mind needs time, Dawn."

Time, just time. Why did it feel like time was running out?

"Plastics."

It was so easy to imagine Rebecca Bloom in her garden party voice: "I just want to say one word to you, Dawnie darling. Just one word. Are you listening? Plastics."

Snickering at my own random inane humor, I opened my eyes under the water and watched the bubbles glide upward. Of course, being Rebecca, it would be more like:

"My truth, Dawnie darling. Plastics recycling." And then she would adjust the strap of her perfectly pre-wrinkled earth toned hemp sundress and totally misquote _The Bhagavad Gita_ or something. What did Giles see in that woman?

Actually, I was more than a little worried about my future. People kept messing with my past, I was almost sure of it.

I let myself float up until my mouth and nose poked out. This was where I felt the safest, my sister's bathroom in her giant gray marble spa tub. It was technically big enough to hold at least three, more if people were feeling extra cuddly. Not that I had an idea whether or not Buffy entertained multiple guests at once in here, nor did I ever want to find out.

Reaching over to the control panel, I adjusted the jets and raised the water temperature. My liver might well be on its way to pickled, but my skin I wanted well simmered. I pushed my back against the jet above the step at the far end of the tub and let it pulsate. Delicious.

Or delirious maybe. Maybe they were sneaking lithium into the water supply now. It hadn't been so uncommon, once upon a time. Sanatorium patients had bathed in lithium-laced water. Lithium was supposed to calm the mind, imparting a soothing euphoria. My mind, however, had a mind of its own, and I was bathing in an abundance of coincidence.

My conference registration packet had arrived in the mail. I had agreed, some weeks prior, in a flurry of impractical giddy geekitude, to sit in on one of the panels: "Neo-Dualism and Wittgenstein's Private Language Argument". At this point, I wasn't sure that I had anything to contribute to such a discussion.

It was the third day field trip schedule that caught my attention. Each of the day trip stops listed was accompanied by a couple of paragraphs of text about the history and relevance of the site. Most of them were historical in nature.

The final stop of the day almost stopped my heart.

It was a ruin, an ancient monastery, apparently once inhabited by the Order of Dagon, a mysterious splinter group, led by a man called Nheg'raal. As local legend went, Nheg'raal had been excommunicated by the Orthodox diocese for the practice of black magic and the entire group had disappeared.

Well, yeah. They disappeared because Glory killed them. I could have told the historians that much. Except that I couldn't because I had no non-classified explanation for how I might have come by that knowledge. Secret identities sucked sometimes.

Nheg'raal. I should have known that name. It was supposed to mean something and it didn't.

"The secret is to work back through to the beginning, and then run it forward again, sweetie," Willow had said. Maybe she was right. Maybe I had to go back to the very beginning, _my_ beginning.

My answers might be in the Czech Republic, maybe. As soon as the thought formed though, it was slammed against the back inside of my skull.

_Not so fast, not that easy._

There was a flash of a scene, another thing that never happened, that was completely impossible, and sickening numbness began spreading through my body. It was the difference between dream and memory smeared chiaroscuro, light and shadow, a truth that was nearly unbearable.

I could almost touch it, that face, smiling and acquiescent, my adoring other self, and those blue eyes, filled with unconditional devotion, pure and innocent and...not. It was all deception. The coiling snake of fear in my chest began to unwind.

_Here's the thing: I killed my best friend._

The memory was jumbled, murky and impossible. There was the Seal, and the knife, and...it happened. But it hadn't.

I slid and scraped my knee on the steps of the tub as I scrambled out of it, grabbing my robe from the hook on the back of the door as I went. I ran to my sister's room, slipping on the tiles and crashing into the corner of her dresser. The sharp pain brought focus. She wasn't in her bed, damn and damn. I raced down the stairs and through the house and almost moaned in relief to find her scrunched at the far end of the living room couch in a Buffy-ball.

Her laptop was open beside her, but she had dozed off. I had to wake her. I had to know.

"Buffy?"

"Dawn! What's wrong?" She came awake, immediately on alert.

"Buffy, who killed Jonathan Levinson?"

"What? Nobody! Unless something's...who did you hear this from, Dawnie?"

"I didn't. I just...I think...what happened to him? I can't remember and it's...it's-"

She rubbed her eyes with her palms and then reached out to me, arms open. I crumpled onto the couch and leaned against her and she held me until I could breathe again.

"You're having another episode, aren't you? Where you-"

"Yeah," I said. "Buffy, tell me what happened to him, please."

"Well," she said, stroking my hair, "We saw Jonathan at that fundraiser in Atlanta back in July, do you remember that? And we met his fiancé, Denise?"

"No," I said.

"You saw her first and you remarked how cute she was, how tiny and roundish, how they'd be like Mister and Missus Santa Claus, the non-demon versions anyway, when they got old, except for her being Vietnamese-"

"But she's not, she's actually from Houston-" I began.

Denise was boisterous and effulgent (as Spike would say) and wore bright fuchsia nail polish and quite possibly half her weight in jangling gold jewelry. She was one of those people who could actually pull off bear hugging instead of shaking hands when introduced. I'd liked her immediately.

"It's coming back now, Dawn?"

"Sort of...why were we there?"

"You know this!" My sister smiled encouragingly. "He works for that data recovery company, Seshat Systems, and he got henpecked into chairing their planned giving program-"

"And was already volunteering with the Southern California Survivors League, who's mission-" I added.

"Dove-tailed so neatly with Council interests." She finished.

Of course that was what happened. Jonathan Levinson was fine. My brain was just doing its thing again.

"Cocoa," said Buffy. "We need cocoa, and then I have to finish going over these reports.

"Mmm, make mine tea?" I said. "The PG Tips with-"

"The milk in first," she finished, rolling her eyes. "Sure, Miss Marple."

I chuckled and followed her into the kitchen, watching her set the kettle on the stove. The house was quiet, even for close to three in the morning.

"Sorry for the radical subject switch, but did you ever get to the agenda for the Paris meeting on Friday?" She asked as she rooted in the cabinet for mugs.

"Yeah. Sent it out to everyone last night. Didn't hit your inbox yet?"

"Haven't checked. Thanks though." The kettle whistled and she picked it up. "I...I wish we could do more for you, Dawn. I wish you didn't have to go through this. You know I'd do anything-"

Guilt clung to her, bending her shoulders, turning down the corners of her eyes. It hurt to see her like that, worried and suffering because of me.

"Mabel's helping." I told her. "I'll be okay, I promise. It's happening less now, I think." The last part was an outright lie and my sister probably knew it. I took the mug she passed to me and wandered back up to my bedroom with it, unable to drink the liquid inside.

_Heathen_

I hated milk in my tea and had no idea why I felt compelled to ask for it that way. It was somehow comforting though, to hold it. Looking at it swirling in the mug, it was a warm hand on my shoulder, a cardinal direction of its own.

When I strained, I could replay images from that trip in my head. There had been the silent auction heaped with toys from ThinkGeek and goodies from Meltdown Comics, which had moved its headquarters out of L.A. right before everything went kablooey. It was a very successful auction. No more So-Cal meant the remaining collectibles market had gone through the roof in recent years.

If I worked at it, I could name the facts of that trip to the decimal place. I could see the dresses that Buffy and I had worn when I shut my eyes; slinky, single shoulder toga numbers. The dresses matched, which was something we never did, but they had been gifts from some nutty designer friend of Rebecca Bloom's. Buffy's dress was indigo blue. Mine was turquoise green.

The heavy hors d' oeuvres buffet had included grilled shrimp and scallops on long bamboo skewers. Our rental had been a red Mini Cooper that stank of old pot smoke. Buffy and I stayed at the Four Seasons that night and the fire alarm had gone off right as we were getting ready and neither of us had finished our makeup and we talked about feeling naked all night. It became our running joke: naked receiving line, naked cocktails, naked salsa dancing at the end, and naked poking Jonathan with my elbow and ribbing him about hopping up onstage and taking a turn on the sax.

I wasn't trying to be mean. It was just friendly snarking, but he got that foggy Glory-is-Ben-is-Glory look and I grokked that somehow I'd never noticed before that his old paragon spell never quite faded for me in the same way as everyone else, including him. After that we'd stood there awkwardly until Denise descended and rescued us and I'd never been more grateful for reminiscence interrupted.

The next day before our flight back, Buffy and I met up with Jonathan and Denise for brunch. They showed us the bungalow they were renovating, with its wide wrap-around porches and hanging ferns and they introduced us to their pair of black and tan miniature dachshunds, Jerry and Terry. They had been charming hosts, and we left with a warm glowing Old Home Week fix, even though our actual old home was long gone.

Jonathan Levinson was alive and well in Atlanta. He was an ally, an old friend in our sea of new ones. He worked for some tech company. He was involved in So-Cal survivor charity work. He occasionally fostered Council-related projects. He was getting married to this completely adorable woman named Denise. Each detail fit neatly into the next.

Except for the part where I was pretty sure I had killed him.

As much as I wanted, _needed_ that Atlanta reality to be true, I also remembered now, with harsh and brutal clarity, standing at the Seal of Danzalthar and driving a knife into Jonathan's gut. I remembered how empty inside I'd felt at the time. I'd wanted to believe that it would make everything okay again. I'd pretended for so long that it could happen.

_He was your friend and he trusted you...This is what you did to him. Took away everything that he was..._

Could I be both the person who murdered Jonathan Levinson back in Sunnydale _and_ the person who had brunch with him and Denise in Atlanta less than a year ago? A person wasn't supposed to be able to have two identities. Reality was supposed to have a definite nature.

Thinking about things wasn't enough anymore. The philosophers, the old men with their white beards and their infinite wisdom had failed me. I found my backpack under the bed and began throwing things into it; my laptop, my favorite mug that I couldn't remember acquiring, a couple of changes of underwear.

I was due in Prague for the conference in a little over a week, and I was anxious to visit the monastery ruins, but a much stronger force pulled me westward. I had to go back to Atlanta. I had to sit down with Jonathan Levinson, and talk about the definite nature of reality. I had to work back through to the beginning before I could run it forward.

_Jonathan would have done it. He would have helped you. _

I had the strangest sense that Jonathan was the only one who could help me.


End file.
